My Favorite Newly Learned Design Skill

How to Make Your Brand and Messaging Standout Seamlessly with Fonts

Some of our favorite brands are identifiable by just a word, a letter or even more impressively, a font. For some products or companies, even applying their brand to the complete antonym word substitute, you would still be able to point them out from all the different fonts in the universe.

Undoubtedly, this is one of the most important aspects of graphic design. We can get into the nitty gritty details about baselines, ascenders, the apexes and vertexes. Although these design aspects are the bones of the letters and words we know and love, before you get your hands dirty with the size, color, leading and kerning, the font selection makes this process seamless.

The right typography can make your design stand out from competitors, resulting in conversion from your brand's competitor. Your logo may be more convincing to the customer. Or, the customer may like how it looks, but little do they know there was someone like you behind the screen, doing what may seem so simple, but in reality, you are giving life to a word.

1. Use the Same Font Family A font family is a group of fonts with a common design that differs in styles, such as the weight or slant. Once you have decided on the generic family (serif, sans-serif and monospace) and the typeface (Arial, Times New Roman, etc.), you can select the different fonts within the family. For example, if you decided your design would be printed, it is easier to read serif fonts — you may select Courier New as your typeface. Since the typeface is light in weight, you may choose Courier New Bold as the font to make it stand out more. This is how you can achieve a clean, minimalistic look with the avenue to go bold if that fits your brand. Try to stick with two styles to ensure readability but still increase the fun and make your mark!

2. Be Minimal, But Bold Great, you have your font family picked out! Now, you should stick with the same font family to not look clashy and like the WordArt on Microsoft Word from the early 2000s. To do this, you can achieve contrast by mixing some styles within the font family and kerning, which we will get into later. Within the same font family, you can access different styles and typefaces.

3. Get Moody Every font conveys a mood and emotion — have you seen the TikTok's of "this is how I think this pasta would walk?" well, fonts are the same — try thinking, "how would this font talk?" Do you want to look forceful and clean? Fun and youthful? A little crazy but structured? Whether you are creating a logo for a brand or designing a poster, think to yourself, "what do I want people to think and feel when they read this?" IMAGE SOURCE https://venngage.com/blog/brand-fonts/

4. Join the Hierarchy Hierarchy is what gives the extra oomph to your typography and gives your brand the edge that makes it stand out. The basics include using bolder or larger fonts to help frame a certain point. You can stick with the same font style and use regular, semi-bold, bold and italics to show hierarchy without too much work. Now that you have learned how to choose a font family and the styles you want to pair let's get into some vocab. First, you have kerning, which is the automatic adjustment between letters. If a traditional text style looks too dull or the spacing of the text creates too much of a contrast, adjusting the spacing between the letters could be the answer you are looking for.

Need some practice before you start? Try Fontjoy where you can generate font pairings in one click. You can even select from hundreds of typefaces and styles as your primary font and find its perfect partner.

Remember, the steps are easy: find your family, make your mark, get moody and find your place in the hierarchy!