The role of typography is twofold:

To clearly connect with your customers and

Accurately reflect the character of your brand

Just as colours play an important role in the communication of your brand, so too does the typeface.

Using a default font on your logo, for example, could be seen as a lack of attention to detail or cutting corners on investment in your own business. Certainly not how you would want to be perceived by future customers.

Therefore, time should equally be taken to decide the correct typeface that will connect with your target audience.

Striking the correct tone

Different fonts express different tones. A care home would choose a font with a tone that expresses warmth and friendliness. A financial services company might choose a font that is more serious and professional. These tones affect the way your customers view your business.

The tone of a font has great power over how your brand is perceived. Remember when Google changed their typeface? The old logo design, created in 1999, was a serif typeface. The new logo is a colourful sans serif typeface called Product Sans. Much had changed within the business of Google and this is why they needed to change their logo.

Fonts express the tone of your business

1. Professional, luxury, knowledge or authority

A business that wishes to express these qualities will choose classic and traditional fonts such as serifs.

2. Straightforward and functional

A business that wishes to express these qualities will choose modern sans serifs that are trendy and simplistic.

3. Reliable and approachable

A business that wishes to express these qualities will choose elegant, thin or narrow fonts.

4. Warm, friendly or even dramatic

A business that wishes to express these qualities will choose bold fonts.

5. Fun, outgoing or emotional

A business that wishes to express these qualities will choose handwritten or scripted fonts. These are not used within text as the smaller the size of font the harder it is to read. You’ll notice many logos use these types of font.

Streamline the fonts you use

If too many fonts are used the outcome is generally messy and confusing. The rule when deciding the fonts to use within your marketing material is to choose just a few. This will ensure your brand image is honed and streamlined.

3 font categories

1. Logo

As previously mentioned this should never by a default font such as Arial or Times New Roman.

Your logo generally creates the first impression and is the long-lasting image that stays with your customers. It differentiates you from your competitors and sets the tone and customers’ expectation.

2. Heading and strapline

Your logo may not use a font but many logos incorporate a strapline, either way, this secondary typeface should complement your logo.

The font chosen should be eye-catching, whilst remaining easy to read and can also be used for headlines and sub-headings.

3. Body text

The font for the body text of your marketing collateral is often taken from the same family as the main fonts. Again, this font should be easy to read as it’s likely to be small and used in larger blocks of text.

Readability is crucial, so a good tip is to choose a font that has generous spaces between the letters so the words can be read more fluidly.

Be consistent

When you consider it can take many encounters with your brand for potential customers to actually connect, you want to avoid making this task even harder through inconsistency of typeface between different channels or media.

Choosing your set of fonts carefully with their use in mind and using them consistently will allow your audience to become familiar with your brand more quickly and make a lasting impression.
Think before updating fonts

Having read this article, you may now feel that your fonts do not accurately reflect the qualities you wish your brand to portray. If you do update your logo font remember to also update the other categories of font so that they all work in harmony.