| There are many components of a brand
identity: logo, color palette, font choice, and the Visual Vocabulary. There's a lot of
information available about the use of logos, colors, and Visual Vocabulary, but not much
on the effective use of fonts. So, here's some information on the creative, practical, and
technical aspects of fonts.
Font Basics
A font is a set of all the letters in the alphabet,
designed with similar characteristics. This is also known as a typeface.
Fonts are usually designed to include several style
variations. This can include styles like light, regular, bold, semi-bold, ultra bold, and
italic. Some fonts also include "Expert" versions, which are fonts that include
fractions and mathematical symbols.
Font families are typically packages of fonts that include
all of the different versions of a font. Using fonts with large families will give you a
wide range of fonts to use in your materials, for variety and emphasis.
There are many basic classifications of fonts. Four of the
most common classes of fonts are:
1. Serif fonts, which have little "feet," called
serifs, at the ends of the lines that make up the letters. Some examples of serif fonts
include Times, Palatino, and Garamond. These fonts are more traditional, elegant, and
old-fashioned.
2. Sans-serif fonts don't have those feet. "Sans
serif" means "without serifs." Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and Helvetica are
some of the most common sans-serif fonts. These fonts are more clean and modern.
3. Script fonts are calligraphic or cursive fonts. Brush
Script and Nuptial Script are two common script fonts.
4. Display fonts are decorative and often used for logos or
headlines.
There are other types of fonts as well, including
handwriting fonts and all-caps fonts. However, the four listed above are the most common
and useful in business communications.
Creative Font Usage Guidelines
Each type of font has certain characteristics that
translate into that font's personality. A font might be serious or light-hearted,
traditional or modern, legible or decorative, or any number of other personality traits.
The traits of the font that you use in your marketing materials and business
communications should reflect and enhance your company's brand.
Your company should have designated fonts to use in
the following situations:
1. A logo font, which is typically not one of the fonts
that come installed on Windows machines: it should be more unique and interesting. Some
logos will have two or three different fonts in them. If this is the case, then consider
using one of those fonts as the secondary font as well.
2. A secondary font, used for headlines, sub-headlines,
taglines, special text such as graphics and captions, and decorative text such as pull
quotes, which are the large quotes that are used decoratively in articles and documents.
This can be the same font as is used in your logo. This is typically an interesting and
unique font as well. This may also be used as the font for your contact information in
your stationery, depending on its legibility.
3. A tertiary font is optional and may be used when the
secondary font is not always legible, for mid-length texts such as pull quotes and contact
information.
4. A serif text font, for lengthy printed documents.
Printed materials are more easily read if they are in serif font rather than sans-serif
font.
5. A sans-serif font, for shorter printed documents and
on-screen use. Text on a computer monitor is easier to read in a sans-serif font than in a
serif font.
6. A website font, which may be the same font as is used as
the main sans-serif text font, depending on how that font translates for online viewing.
All of these fonts should have similar or contrasting
characteristics. Choosing fonts with similar characteristics will make your fonts match
and create consistency throughout your documents. Choosing fonts with contrasting
characteristics will build visual texture and interest into your materials. For example,
you could pick all thin, sans-serif fonts such as Arial and Frutiger to create a
harmonious, matching suite of fonts. Or you could pick fonts with contrasting
characteristics to create greater interest, such as using a serif font like Palatino for
the headlines and then using a sans-serif font like Verdana for the text.
Each piece of marketing material or document created should
have a maximum of three or four families of fonts on them. (A font family includes all of
the bold and italic variations of a particular font, so using bold or italic effects does
not count as additional fonts.) Using more than three or four fonts is confusing, and it
looks unprofessional.
Practical Font Usage Guidelines
Fonts can require special consideration when you send
materials to a professional printer for reproduction, use them on your website, or send
Word documents to others. Here are some basics on using fonts and preserving their
appearance in these cases.
1. In printed materials, it's easier to read long blocks of
copy that is set in a serif font. Sans-serif fonts are usually used in print for short
blocks of information, like headlines, pull quotes, or bulleted lists.
When sending your materials to be professionally printed,
make sure to address your desires regarding the use of fonts. You can either include the
fonts with the files you send to the printer (which might be considered a copyright
license infringement), rasterize your artwork (convert it to pixels, so the font data is
no longer needed), or outline your fonts (creating shapes out of the fonts, an option
that's available in most vector art programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia
Freehand), so that they can be printed accurately. Outlining the fonts is the best way to
guarantee that your fonts will remain accurate and sharp.
2. Online, in websites, emails, and HTML newsletters,
sans-serif fonts look the best: they're clean, clear, and easy to read. There is one other
trick to online font use: you have to make sure that you use fonts that will be installed
on the computers of people reading your site. Otherwise, your text will appear in the
default font selected by their browser, which is often Courier, a very plain font. That
limitation does leave you with several fonts to choose from, though, including Verdana,
Arial, Tahoma, and Trebuchet MS.
Serif fonts could also be used on websites; however, it's
best to use them in limited quantities, such as for headlines and subheads. Some fonts
that are available to use on the web include Times, Times New Roman, and Georgia.
Another issue that commonly arises with online fonts is the
difficulty in controlling the size and appearance of those fonts. Standard font tags in
HTML don't offer precise sizing control and need to be used several times throughout each
HTML document, so making changes can be time-consuming. You can use Cascading Style
Sheets, or CSS, to precisely control the exact size of your fonts and to make site-wide
font, size, or color changes with one simple alteration.
3. In Word Documents, you also want to make sure that the
fonts that you use for the text will be available on the recipient's computer. Good fonts
to use are the standard fonts that come installed on PCs, which include Arial, Verdana,
Tahoma, Times New Roman, Georgia, Palatino, Courier, and Trebuchet MS.
In order to insert a small amount of customized
text—such as your logo, tagline, or address information—create an image of that
information and to place it in the header and footer of the page.
Another way to preserve the appearance of text is to export
your document as a PDF file and send it to the recipient; PDF files embed the fonts into
each document so that they can be viewed on any computer and still look right.
Some Technical Info About Font File Types
When you purchase fonts to use on your computer, you'll
often be given a choice of buying a Post Script, True Type, or Open Type font. Here is a
brief explanation of the characteristics and problems with each of these formats:
1. Post Script fonts are considered industry standard and
are therefore preferred by professional printers. There is a format of Post Script fonts
available for Macintosh computers and another format available for Windows computers;
those fonts cannot be shared between Macs and PCs.
2. True Type fonts are often found on Windows machines.
These fonts do not print as well as Postscript fonts.
3. Open Type fonts are the newest type of font. They are
cross-platform compatible, but many fonts aren't yet available in this format.
With this information about the creative, practical, and
technical aspects of font usage, we hope that you can make font choices that will enhance
your brand.
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