1. Zarma Type
  2. »
  3. Blog
  4. »
  5. Choosing the Right Font for Your Brand: A Practical Guide

Choosing the Right Font for Your Brand: A Practical Guide

Choosing the Right Font for Your Brand A Practical Guide

Did you know that choosing the right font for your brand is part of the bedrock of a cohesive brand identity? Typography is beyond text; it expresses your brand’s essence, delivering information, shaping interaction, and creating audience experience.

The fonts you choose play a crucial role in either strengthening your brand’s consistency or creating dissonance. Let’s explore how to make the right choice!

Key Takeaways:

  • Consider key aspects, including audience, personality, and values, to guide font choices.
  • Prioritize legibility and functionality to ensure the cohesiveness, longevity, and versatility of your brand fonts and brand-building strategy.
  • Maintain consistent font usage across the website, packaging, and printed materials to build brand recognition and trust.

Key Considerations for Choosing the Right Font for Your Brand 

Selecting a brand font requires careful consideration for consistent brand building. The following aspects are key to unlocking it.

1. Alignment with the Essence of Your Brand Identity

Consider the following points as the part where you put the foundation, pillar, and backbone of your brand.

  1. Core values of your brand: align the font choice with the product/service that you offer and its goal, objective, or mission.
  2. Target audience: align the typography choice to who your audience is and their interests and values to create effective resonance.
  3. Brand personality: what kind of message, impression, and emotion you want to express to your audience, and alignment with your product’s/service’s nature is pivotal to define a matched font personality. For example, you can go with the serif font style for a professional and traditional personality. Or use the display or experiment for a dramatic and futuristic approach.
Brand personality and visual identity for brand building
Brand personality and visual identity for brand building (Source: Pexels – Eva Bronzini)

Also Read: Your Brand Logo Design Tips for Effective Branding

2. Categorize Font Functionality

This allows you to narrow down the list options and number optimally. Start by limiting your font numbers to three, which serves to follow the hierarchy characteristic below.

  • Headings: visually distinctive and readable at a large size.
  • The secondary text (such as subheadings and captions): harmonize clarity with visual contrast.
  • Body text: prioritize legibility, weigh on kerning, letter spacing, and the x-height for a comfortable reading experience.
font hierarchy following functions
font hierarchy following functions (Source: Canva AI Generated)

3. Examine the Font Readability and Legibility

While style matters, readability and legibility should be priorities. Determine the font function category first, then select the appropriate font style for effective message delivery.

Comparison of Good and Bad Legibility
Comparison of Good and Bad Legibility (Source: Freepik AI Generated)

Practical Tips for Effective Font Selection

The talk of how to choose the right font for your brand should be accompanied by actionable tips to walk you through the process. Here are the practical tips to guide your brand selection, covering inspirations to legal considerations.

1. Seek Inspiration but Be Unique

Draw inspiration from how your competitors or homologues in the industry use fonts to express their brand identity. Then, explore additional resources such as online font libraries, design portfolios, or dedicated marketplaces to find unique collections with a familiar yet distinctive feel.

Example of font inspired by popular brand (Google)
Example of font inspired by popular brand (Google) (Source: ChatGPT AI-generated)

Also Read: Monochromatic Branding: The Power of a One-Colour Identity

2. Limit Your Font Palette

Having more than three fonts hinders effective utilization and brand expression consistency. Aim for two is sufficient. Yet, picking three fonts allows you to complement each other in function and style for the text. This creates visual contrast and hierarchy for your graphic design.

Brand font palette inspiration
Brand font palette inspiration (Source: Canva AI Generated)

3. Gauge Its Technical Quality

Revisit alignment of your brand’s identity and assess the font’s technical aspects: weight, contrast, and also shape when choosing the right font for your brand. 

According to BBC Science Focus, certain shapes and forms are highly interlinked to specific combinations and emotions, so it’s important to carefully consider your font’s basic shapes. For example, sans-serif impacts a positive, dreamy impression.

Check that the typography sizes, weights (bold, thin), and styles (italic, alternates) are compatible across print or screen platforms for proper readability. Chittlesoft also explained the importance of abiding by the Web Content Accessibility Guideline to ensure your text is easy to access for everyone.

4. Check Licensing Carefully

Understand about free, open-source, and different paid font licensing types. Each requires certain legality to its purpose (web, print, and commercials). Ensure you have the correct license for your intended font to avoid legal issues.

Zarma Type font license type
Zarma Type font license type

Also Read: How to Create Eco-friendly Branding for Your Stationery Business

3 Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Some brands followed the tips on how to choose a brand font but forgot about the key considerations. They did not realize the following pitfalls that crushed their efforts.

1. Chasing Trends

What becomes popular often meets people’s basic needs, and at the same time, it inspires them. However, chasing only what’s trending risks the longevity and consistency of your brand identity.

Malou Verlomme, Monotype’s type designer, said, “Trends may not apply to your brand, and you shouldn’t feel pressure to follow trends just because that’s what everyone else is doing.” 

2. Inappropriate Legibility and Readability

A lack of contrast and poor hierarchy, or crumpled spacing and uncluttered combination, confuses your brand message delivery. It potentially disconnects them from your brand.

Tackle these issues by leveraging tools like font pairing tools, or opt for consultation with typography designers to optimize technical quality consideration.

3. Overlook Accessibility

Overlooking the need to choose fonts with a certain level of contrast and clear letterforms risks losing potential users with visual impairment and significant inclusive impact that sets your brand’s reputation.

Font contrast and clear letterforms for accessibility
Font contrast and clear letterforms for accessibility (Source: Freepik/edited)

Also Read: Minimalist vs. Maximalist Branding: Finding the Perfect Typeface for Your Identity

Choosing the Right Font for Your Brand Impacts Your Brand Building Strategy

Your brand font is what connects you with your audience. Thus, proper font choice will surely affect the consistency and cohesiveness, which influence people’s perception of your brand. Zarma Type serves you with a myriad of professional brand fonts to help you build optimal brand identity. Take a look at our collection and get yours right away!

Share :

Related Post

Scroll to top