Font. Colours. Alignment. Size.
All these are elements are crucial while developing your brand. One might ponder it as a non-significant component that can be pushed off and decided at the last minute. But it isn’t. Typefaces and typography require meticulous attention and research. It can make or break a brand. For instance, opting for a readable font for a restaurant menu has a much higher success rate than choosing a fancy one.
Albeit, selecting a font and looking at its attributes can be overwhelming for some and mystifying for the others. It requires careful evaluation. How do you go about it? Will it appeal to the readers? Is it childish to use a Non-Serif font? Or too literary to use Slab Serif? Which font makes a strong first impression? Times New Roman or Calibri or SF?
These questions can take a while to answer. Luckily, we have done the work for you. Look at the tips below as your one-stop solution to answer all your quandaries about typefaces!
1. Lesson 101: The Basics
First and foremost, a typeface is a collection of letters where a similar pattern or design is shared across all the alphabetical and numerical entries. In simpler terms, it is the pull-down bar with endless options as fonts in every writing software.
Fonts are selected with various factors in mind like readability, style, legibility, and more. You also need to focus on the requirements of the baseline, the invisible line where the letter begins and ends. A uniform baseline is preferred when it comes to formal documents. A non-uniform can be used for children’s books, comics, and other whimsical variants. Also, take a look at the weight of the typeface. In essence, how bold a letter looks. Calibri Light has a different body tone than Calibri.
2. Serif or Sans Serif
A Serif, mainly used in calligraphy, is an extra stroke at the open ends of the letters, lowercase or uppercase. Sans serif, as the name suggests, are ones that omit the final stroke. Serif fonts, generally, make their appearance in lengthy documents like bank forms or lawyer formulated agreements. The extra stroke of the brush provides additional space between individual letters making it easier for the eye to follow the line and read accurately. Fiction and vintage travel books, A Little Life, for instance, are written using Serif fonts like Baskerville, Sabon and more. Meanwhile, Sans serif fonts like Comic Sans are employed in fanciful notations, that is in books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, comics, children’s book or interviews.
3. Legibility and Readability
Legibility refers to the design of the font in question, its width, height, serif or non-serif type, and more. Decorative fonts have low legibility as compared to the non-decorative ones. For example, users will have a harder time while reading a post written in Tobin Tax than Sabon. Hence, Sabon has higher legibility. Take The King, for example, the headings and titles of books are often written using non-serif fonts to show continuity among letters. However, it is always advised to use conventional letters forms to make the writing user friendly and get more accurate results.
Readability, on the other hand, is the combination of colour, font, tracking, kernel, leading, and more. Readability also focuses on the size of the font. An example being, the Terms and Conditions of any application are written in a smaller size as compared to the rest of the application making it less readable and more complicated. That is also a reason why many people choose to ignore the conditions!
| >Pro Tip: Invest an adequate amount of time and research to find the font that best describes your brand! |
4. What’s the Occasion?
Is it a clothing website that you’re designing, creating a book cover, writing a detailed book report for your college essay or just writing a book? Comprehend the mood and tones of the reader. Always keep the target audience in mind while picking out a typeface. While a professor might want to read in a serif font, a lay-man, who is skimming through options, might not like the serious approach.
Keep your biases aside for this one. Put yourself in the shoes of others and read and re-read the final product as their person to understand how they will perceive the text.
5. Phone a Friend
It never hurts to seek the opinion of others. Open your website or your product or your book to a limited number of people and test them on how they are able to read. Ask them if the fonts and typefaces are complimenting the brand and its image. Access their responses and tweak your brand accordingly.
It is important to invest an adequate amount of time and research in your product to make it flawless. Remember, you only have a few chances to make edits once the final product is out in the market. Too many changes are chaotic.
6. A Simple Palette
No one likes hindrance when it comes to reading, especially reading interesting content. Make sure there is uniformity across all platforms. If headings are in Georgia then look up its contrasting stroke and use that for the body text. Research and learn about opposing fonts. And while breaking the rules is the norm, don’t overdo it.
Use a maximum of three typefaces. One for the heading, one for the deck, and one for the body text. You know how they say three is a group but four is a crowd. Using too many fonts can confuse the reader in their comprehension.
In conclusion, it’s the often missed minute details that make a huge difference. Fonts are definitely one for the book. Picking a typeface requires research, knowledge of style, and tedious understanding of design. In the end, though, the number of hours is worth it. We hope that these guidelines help you pick the typeface which speaks volume of your brand!
