Typography 101 Design to Define Your Brand’s Personality

The original typeface was a Blackletter variety used by Johannes Gutenberg on the first printing press, starting in 1440. It’s been quite a while since the first printed letters. This font-face is very definitive with a sovereign attitude; very fitting for the time period and purpose of what was being produced. See the following image:

The shapes of these letters were hard-coded if you will. They were formed with metal and were extremely durable so they may be used over and over again. There were many set design choices indeed.

Fast forward some centuries and we now have a seemingly unlimited choice ranging from Wingdings to Blocky and many more proper, readable, and elegant fonts including Montserrat and Quicksand.

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Web Font support in 2021 has brought best and the worst out to play. You’re definitely not using Wingdings or any other crazy font, right?

With an endless ocean of options, how will we actually make a fitting, appropriate design choice? There are some do’s and don'ts, so we can just get on with the blog, website, flyer; you name it! 

When designing the logo for an architectural firm, you wouldn’t want a ludicrous, empty-headed identity attached to the client. They are designing something very expensive and made to last for years and years. 

With wavy-like lines and semi curved angles Wild Nature looks sort-of ridiculous for a professional  firm:

An architectural firm wants to convey competency, order and a strategic approach to building that doesn’t involve any mis-steps due to wavy-like lines from the foundation. A great font for something that would help solidify an appropriate message would be something like Avenir Next or even PT Sans.

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Deciding your logo is all up to you or your client but understanding perception is the key to stellar marketing, and it all starts with your logo

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So with the above example let’s flip the script for clarity's sake.

Say a client comes to you and wants a logo design with some edge and punch. A local Colorado punk carnage genre band –  they want a really selfish and rather rough look connected with their b(r)and. They don’t care about straight lines – they break guitars and get blood on them every Saturday night at the dive bar. Suppose you came back to them with this: 

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I’m not really in the punk carnage scene myself, but I’m not too impressed with the even orderly Avenir Next font. I’m guessing that Blood-Rage wouldn’t be too happy with your choice.

Okay so these guys like it messy and unordered? Take number 2 may go a bit better with our messy Wild Nature font from the previous example: 

”Hey dude that’s looking a little better buuuut where's the VITRIOL, my guy? Don’t you know what kind of message we’re trying to send to the man with our work?!!!” - Billie the Sadist , Lead singer - Blood-Rage.

Alright so they want messy, unordered, and vitriolic? Let’s try a heinous font like Cloister Black:

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“Woah, You hit the nail on the skull, dude.” Billie the Sadist - Lead singer - Blood-Rage.

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With its draconian edge their name pops and with support from Autobahn for “Carnage Music”

There is now a sinister tone with this logo and now their personality can jump out at you.

There we go, Billie is happy and you are too! Mission accomplished.

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The point of the right typography is communication.

What type of message do you want to portray to the website visitor? Typography can get pretty advanced with things like Kerning, Finial, Counter’s, Bowl, Ear, Ascender Line, etc. which I’m not going to get into – I want to present the nuggets here. When it comes to selecting general fonts, I personally like using Poppins or Montserrat in most cases and depending on the project industry and target market, I ’d use a relevant font type for the headings.

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To recap: It’s always up to you, however, if you take the time to carefully consider certain things that the personality or brand is doing you will always find one or two choices that work best. These logos will end up on flyers, business cards, websites and more! Once they make their way around it’s not the easiest to rebrand and take back mediocre design choices. 

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