The font you use in your communications says a lot about your brand—your target audience, your brand voice and style, your design inspirations, your aesthetic.
Your font alone can give readers an idea of who you are and what you sell. Whether you intend it or not, your font adds meaning to your communications.
The question is this: what is your font communicating? Is it an accurate reflection of your brand?
And if not, what font would fit your brand best?
Keep reading to find out.
Serif Fonts
Serif fonts have small, decorative strokes on the ends of the characters called serifs.
Serifs help guide the eye from left to right, and serif fonts tend to be easier to read than fonts without serifs or “sans serif”. There are even studies that suggest serif fonts improve reading comprehension due to reduced eye strain—at least in print (more on that later).
A serif font suggests your brand is
Professional
Sophisticated
Authoritative
Classic
Formal
Serif fonts are especially great for law firms, financial institutions, jewelers, or businesses with a long and storied history in their industries.
Slab Serif Fonts
Slab serif fonts are a subtype of serif fonts. The strokes in slab serif fonts are blocky, giving the letters a geometric appearance.
Slab serif fonts are famous for their use in old newspapers, typewriters, and woodblock lettering. They can give your brand a classic feel, and fonts with thicker slabs come across as strong and bold.
When you use a slab serif font, you tell your readers that you’re
Dependable
Confident
Rugged
Bold
Innovative
A slab serif font is a great choice for a modern brand with a retro edge that wants to seem more relatable than those with classic serif fonts.
Sans Serif Fonts
Sans serif fonts, as the name suggests, have no serifs. The letters tend to look smoother and rounder with uniform thickness of each stroke.
While serif fonts may be more legible in print, sans serif fonts are better for digital media, according to Adobe. San serif fonts are the font of choice all over the internet—including this blog! They’re clean, fresh, and often associated with technological advancements.
Sans serif fonts are
Modern
Minimalist
Sharp
Efficient
Clean
These fonts don’t waste space, ink, or pixels with decorative serifs—they get right to the point. If you’re in the tech, gaming, auto, or fashion industries, a sans serif font is the way to go.
Handwritten Fonts
Like the name suggests, handwritten fonts mimic handwriting.
In contrast to the clean, rigid lines of most serif and sans serif fonts, handwritten fonts look a little more casual. They may have some irregularities and lines of uneven thickness.
Handwritten fonts add a personal touch and human flair to your brand. They can be messy and imperfect, which can make your brand stand out from clean, flawless logos.
A handwritten font suggests your brand is
Personal
Casual
Relatable
Natural
Approachable
If you have a small, creative business that prides itself on adding a human touch to every project, a handwritten font is perfect for you.
Script Fonts
Script, cursive, or calligraphy fonts are a subtype of handwritten font with loops and wisps that connect the letters.
Script fonts are almost never used for body copy due to legibility. Instead, they’re used for logos, phrases, and headlines.
If you use a script font for your logo, your brand is
Elegant
Theatrical
Stylish
Feminine
Luxurious
Script fonts are especially common in the beauty, hospitality, and wellness industries.
Decorative Fonts
Decorative fonts are highly stylized and vary from brand to brand. They’re most commonly used in logos to express a brand’s unique personality and grab a reader’s attention.
A decorative font may also qualify as another font type (handwritten, serif, etc.), but it is marked by customized features in the letter shapes and strokes. Think of decorative fonts as novelties, used mostly to make logos stand out.
Because decorative fonts vary so much, they can convey a lot of different meanings. Most decorative fonts suggest a brand is
Fun
Creative
Original
Youthful
Unconventional
These are seen in all kinds of consumer-facing brands, like food and beverages, entertainment, children’s goods, and homeware.
Need help nailing down your brand identity? Not sure if your font reflects your brand, or if you’re sending mixed messages to your audience with your font choices? We’d love to help. Schedule a call, and let us know how our creative team can use typography (as well as design, color, language, and more) to tell your brand’s story. The font you use is communicating with audiences—make sure it’s communicating what you want it to!
