Content plays an important part in any website and branding design. How these words are presented is crucial and should be carefully used so that they create an impact on those who see them.
An average website consists of 90 percent typography, developed to make it easy for consumers to locate information, as well as, access products and services in the process.
At Accentuate Web Design and Marketing, we’ve helped hundreds of brands with all aspects of branding including web and stationary design and so much more. Add to that, our design team experts synchronise colour palettes and branding through all your content to ensure consistency your customers will instantly recognise.
We’re constantly processing printed words, whether they be in books, on labels, on our phones, or websites. They can be seen everywhere, from billboards to street signs and more.
Everybody today knows what fonts are. But what of typography? Well, those two aren’t the same. When you talk of how your fonts are displayed or printed, that’s typography. The combination of their use radiates your brand’s identity and personality.
For a website, the significance of the typography of fonts can’t be emphasised. It helps your website with readability, hierarchy, and most importantly, brand identification. We get to examine the power of the written word, but we rarely think about the designer’s role in mimicking the spirit of the word used in sentences.
What are Brand Fonts?
Brand fonts are visual elements that arrange your business’s written copy legibly and align your brand messaging with your brand personality and identity.
A brand font is a specific typeface that makes up your visual brand identity and should be a part of your branding guidelines. It helps you be consistent during the creation of new materials such as your business cards, shell sheets, booklets, social media graphics, billboards, packaging, and more.
Even before a customer digests your marketing message, the font is already at work in communicating something to them. Each font you use can convey a different feel of the message, and each has its own set of strengths and weaknesses.
Choosing your brand fonts is a lot like picking an outfit in a store. You can technically wear anything the store offers, but you have to be practical in choosing what suits your needs and what works best for your style. Though picking any font can’t be a bad choice, some are just not appropriate.
Having a better understanding of what fonts work best for your brand makes it easier for you to create a clear style guide, ensuring your company’s marketing remains cohesive across platforms.
Why are Brand Fonts Important in Branding?
Employing the right font in a design is often an element neglected by those who don’t understand its importance. It is crucial to comprehend this if you want your visuals to effectively convey your brand’s identity.
Fonts and typography are major elements in a design that speak to your customers. If chosen correctly and appropriately, they can evoke emotions and showcase your brand’s best side. If done right, your choice of fonts can create a huge impact on the ‘feel’ of your business and connect your customers to the very core of your brand.
A brand’s aspects such as its logo, emails, documents, packaging, website, imagery, and social media include a good amount of font and typography. Being such, it is a crucial element of your brand in ways that:
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- It gives your brand meaning and captures viewers’ attention.
- Defines the way people experience your brand.
- Gives your content an aesthetic feel and evokes moods.
- It influences customer perception and professionalism.
- Builds brand recognition and awareness.
Fonts should be able to relay information, as well as, optimising readability and accessibility, framing the overall user experience. The use of unique and consistent font and typography helps in making customers associate a particular typeface with your brand.
Even if you have a perfect logo for your company, you may not wish to change fonts for your social media captions to keep things congruent. The fonts used in the graphics you create and share on social media, and across your website, are just as important as your logo.
Fonts set the stage for the words your readers are about to process and create the first impression of your brand. So, finding fonts that represent your company’s brand is of prime importance. It can help make your customer’s experience pleasurable and will stick a positive connotation to your whole brand.
EXAMPLE: When you think of Coca-Cola. The image you see in your head is Coca-Cola written/printed in white script font set against a red background. The stylised Spencerian Script used by Coca-Cola is a registered trademark that provided the uniqueness that the founder of the soft drink company desired.
Why are Brand Fonts Important in Web Design?
There is more to choosing a beautiful and effective font. It’s also a key component in your user website’s interface design. They help establish a strong visual identity that sets the overall tone of your website and creates a good graphic balance.
Further, fonts help influence decision-making and can have a profound effect on the way your customers perceive and digest the information conveyed by your copy. Furthermore, if the font you choose is easy on the eyes, it helps in holding the attention of your readers, encouraging them to stay longer on your website.
At Accentuate Web Design and Marketing, we make it a point to aim to make your website responsive, memorable, and visually appealing for all the right reasons. Carefully choosing appropriate fonts plays an important part in that process. At Accentuate, we harness good design principles and creativity in the websites we create for maximum impact.
Find out more about our approach HERE.
How Brand Fonts Can Be Used.
Other than your logo, your brand fonts are used to design other aspects of your marketing visuals. So, there will be different text objects such as headings, subheadings, accent fonts, call-to-action fonts, and body text.
Classifying the use of fonts such as those listed above follows a system called a typographic hierarchy. The system of ordering the fonts in a hierarchy shows your reader which information to focus on first, then second, and so on.
If you happen to use just one typeface, then the size of the font matters a lot. Generally, the largest fonts are placed on top such as titles and headings, subheads in smaller sizes, and the rest of the text body as the smallest.
The importance of this is that it adds structure, creates visual organisation, reinforces recognition, and makes it easier for people to read your content.
The attention span of people is gradually decreasing. Implementing structure helps drive your reader’s attention to crucial information instantly and not miss the opportunity to bring something to the notice of your target audience.
You should choose a font that highlights key information and also for call-to-actions. If someone can’t read or see your call to action, they’d have no idea what you want them to do, rendering your effort as a missed opportunity.
Tips for Selecting the Right Font for Your Brand.
Before looking into the ways you can choose or forge the right font, typeface, and typography for your brand, let us look at the qualities of a good brand font.
Ensure that your brand font should be:
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- Unique
- Legible
- Memorable
- Can communicate your Brand Personality
- Multi-platform oriented
These are the essential qualities that your brand will employ as an extension of its personality across multiple channels. In selecting the right fonts for your brand, you have to consider the following:
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Get to know and establish your brand personality.
Every brand needs its brand personality to be clear and well-defined. This is what your customers relate with, connect with, and remember you for. In turn, this plays a role in enhancing brand awareness.
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Understand the personality traits of font categories.
Font categories are what designers, including ours at Accentuate, help in choosing, pairing, and identifying fonts. Each font category has its traits that will help you narrow down your search and zero in on the right feel for your brand.
The six basic font classifications are Serif, Sans-serif, Slab serif, Script, Handwritten, and Decorative.
For example: Serif Fonts are traditional, classic, and trustworthy. They’re favoured by brands that want to convey a feeling of respectability and tradition.
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Know the licensing requirements and set a budget for using fonts.
Yes, you have to keep in mind how you are going to source your fonts. However, you can use free, open-source fonts from:
Paid font licences can give you more options, but they can be quite costly. Most of these paid font libraries will charge individual fees for each type of font licence. What this means for you is, if you want to use your new font on the web, a mobile app, or for print materials, you’ll have to shell out three separate font licences.
We recommend the use of Open Licence Google Fonts for the best compatibility for both online and print media applications, and of course, the added benefit is that they are free!
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Pick 3 fonts (at most) that match your brand personality.
Getting familiar with the different font categories is your next step after outlining your brand personality. From there, you will be able to try out some fonts you can use for your brand.
There is a massive style variation within each category that can impact the vibe of each font. Knowing which fonts to work in tandem with one another and that works well plays a huge role, too.
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Make sure the brand fonts you choose meet 3 basic requirements.
After you choose the brand fonts that align with your brand personality, there are a few final checks you have to do before using them for your business.
Your Brand Fonts have to be flexible – Keep in mind that you might be using these fonts for many years. Ensure that they will work well for every medium, including, print, web, and mobile. If you’re using paid fonts, ensure you have the proper licence for each application.
Your Brand Fonts should have multiple sizes and font weights – Font weights such as light, regular, semibold, and bold are critical for building a clear text hierarchy. Ensure that these variations are specified in your brand style guide. Different font weights are a way to differentiate between headers, subheaders, body text, callouts, quotes, or calls to action both in print and online media.
Your Brand Fonts must be Legible – Nobody likes to read a copy that’s difficult to read. Your brand font should be easy to read at a glance.
PRO TIP: It also doesn’t hurt to check out how your competitors present themselves. In the process of creating a distinctive presence for your brand, you would do yourself a disservice if you used a typographic language that’s identical to that of your rivals.
Takeaways
Coming up with Brand Fonts is a complex process that will result in the increased recognition of your brand. Choosing the right ones will also attain for your brand the consistency and cohesiveness of your brand personality across all channels.
How you use Brand Fonts has a decided impact on how customers perceive your content and your brand. What this means for your business is that your font choices can have a real dollar influence on your bottom line.
Are you finding it a challenge to come up with your brand’s visual concept? We recommend that you book a FREE strategy session with our team at Accentuate Web Design and Marketing. Get in touch with us and let’s discuss the best strategies for your brand.
