by Brian Dove
September 27, 2023
Fonts are essential to a brand’s tone of voice. Just like a missing comma can completely change the meaning of a sentence, identical phrases typeset in different fonts can have profoundly different meanings.
When designing a brand identity, choosing what typefaces to pair with the logo you’ve made is just as important as the logo itself. In this post, we’ll talk about what to consider when selecting typefaces for a visual identity, how to pair complimentary typefaces, as well as show some examples from our brand identity design work.
Note: this post will intentionally avoid discussing licensing. That’s a huge topic that we’ll save for another post.
Display vs. Text Typefaces
One common issue we see new brand designers making (and one that we made ourselves early on in our careers) is not considering the intended use of the typefaces they’re selecting. Typeface designers create different fonts for use at specific sizes. Typically, those sizes are noted on the sales page or type specimen for the font, but there are also characteristics to look out for to help differentiate between a display typeface (or banner, titling, headline font) and a text typeface. These aren’t hard and fast rules; sometimes a text face works great for display, and vice versa. But knowing the difference will help you better understand what kind of fonts are appropriate for different uses.
In general, display fonts have higher contrast (the difference between thick/thin strokes), tighter spacing, and a higher x-height (how tall the lowercase is in relation to the uppercase). When set at smaller point sizes, these characteristics usually lead to a muddier, difficult to read text. When used at larger sizes, however, they lend the typeface the personality and tone that drew you to it in the first place!
On the other hand, text typefaces are specifically designed for use at smaller point sizes and in large blocks of running text. They typically feature lower contrast, a lower x-height to help distinguish the uppercase and lowercase, and more generous spacing between the letterforms. All of this leads to increased legibility at a wider range of sizes, particularly smaller point sizes.
some Differences between display and text fonts (Left: Swear Display Cilati Bold by ohno type co. right: times new roman regular)
Character Sets, Styles, and OpenType Features
Other things to consider when selecting a typeface to use in a visual identity are the typeface styles, features, and character sets.
Character Set
The character set of a typeface refers to the total array of glyphs included in a typeface. The character set determines what languages the fonts can be used in, which is important to consider when designing a brand identity in an increasingly global economy. Even if the product you’re designing for is only going to be distributed in the U.S., selecting a typeface that covers Western European languages (at the bare minimum) is a smart choice. Fonts that only cover A-Z, a-z and some basic punctuation may work great for creating a logotype, but for setting text on the web (where things may be auto-translated) or handing off to the client to use however they choose, selecting a typeface with a wider character set is a more future-proof choice.
Styles
When we say styles, we’re referring to the individual fonts in a type family such as weight (light, bold, medium), width (compressed, wide, extended), italic and upright, or whatever else the type designer included in their design. The number and type of styles included in a typeface is also an important consideration when selecting type for a visual brand. Does the font have a variety of weights and widths to facilitate typesetting in different ways? Is that useful for your project? Does your display font have a complimentary italic the client can use for emphasis?
Different styles of the same family, in roman and italic (gooper by very cool studio)
OpenType Features
OpenType features allow type designers to include things like alternates, ligatures, and other functionalities coded into the font file. In Adobe apps, they’re accessible via the OpenType panel. In use on the web, CSS can be used to activate various features.
So of course this is another thing to consider when choosing fonts for branding. Will the font be used mostly in all-caps? Then you might want to choose something with case-sensitive punctuation. Using a text typeface to set large amounts of data? Better to use tabular lining numerals instead of oldstyle proportional numerals (or text figures).
To each their own but…oldstyle numerals make data look ugly IMHO.
Alternates
Many typefaces also include stylistic alternates that can be activated to change the look of specific characters that might better match your brand’s tone. This is also an OpenType feature and can be accessed in the OpenType panel or via CSS. Our typeface Clearly, for example, features alternates for some uppercase forms that are simply a different aesthetic approach to the letterforms.
Putting It All Together
Now that you know some of the technical aspects of what to look for when selecting brand typefaces, let’s talk about the purely aesthetic side of things. When selecting brand typefaces, we like to choose at least two typefaces—typically one for display and one for text—that are complementary, but also have some contrast between one another. We look for our display fonts first, choosing something that is interesting in use with the logo. Sometimes this is a font that’s used in the logo itself, but more often than not it’s a different typeface entirely that further accentuates the tone of voice we’re trying to convey with the brand. Here are a couple examples from our portfolio.
In our brand identity for SoSS, for example, the display type family (VC Henrietta) was selected to provide some warmth and humor in contrast to the more geometric and straight logotype (a customization of Zoo). Both the condensed and regular widths of Henrietta are used in the brand to provide more flexibility in fitting text to different amounts of space. For this brand, Swear Medium is used as a sub-headline display face and Degular is used for text. With two serifs as display fonts, a relatively simple (but still warm) sans-serif for text provides the right amount of contrast for this brand.
For Murphy Beverage Co., we created a custom logotype based on some lettering on an old sandwich board the shop had. Below “Murphy” in the logotype, we set “Beverage Co.” in Tuppence from Delve Fonts. In the brand identity, we also used Tuppence as a display font to create a through-line connecting the logotype to the visual applications. The folks at Murphy Beverage wanted to modernize the shop while still honoring the history of the store, so we selected the goofball sans-serif Roquefort from Polytype as a text face to contrast the old-world charm of Tuppence.
Our branding work for SoSS and Murphy Beverage Co. in action.
Type is Fun, Have Fun with Type!
Other than understanding some of the technical aspects to consider, pairing typefaces doesn’t need to be as hard as people make it seem. Trust your eyes, stay up to date on what new fonts are coming out, support independent type designers, and have fun pairing fonts. Happy typesetting!
