Your Font Selection Will Make or Break Typographic Logos

Faizan Ahmad
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Unless you've spent a lot of time in web or print design, you probably don't pay much attention to fonts. You know that you want a logo and branding that looks professional — getting acquainted with fonts means the difference between choosing Helvetica or Comic Sans to represent your brand.

Think about brands like Coca Cola, Apple, and countless other big businesses who use typography-based logos and marketing materials. You might not know the font names, but they're distinctive and add their own flavor to the branding.

For an example of how fonts greatly affect perception, consider the Higgs Boson discovery. The Week reports that Comic Sans MS was used in the announcement, undermining the authority and weight of such a monumental scientific discovery.

Andy Hayes, a creative web producer, says that font and color are two of the most important factors that influence user experience on your website. You have plenty of experience marketing your business over the years, but a few tweaks with your typography are well worth the trouble.

Changing Up Fonts

When you're looking at rebranding an established business, you need to carefully consider your options. The risks of changing up fonts for your branding efforts could lead to customer confusion, wasted marketing budget, and other issues.

However, changing up your fonts can also lead to greater market dominance, a fresh look that attracts more customers, and higher sales. Collaborate with your design and marketing team to get input on effective font selection for your business, font costs and availability, and incorporating new fonts into your typography logo.

Typographic Logos
Image Licensed under Attribution

Matching Fonts to Medium

Not all fonts are created equal. Web-optimized fonts aren't your go to choice when you print business cards, and for good reason. The web optimized fonts aren't made for professional printing, so the DPI is lower than fonts designed for print. Make sure that you're making your font selections with respect to where it's being presented.

While you want your main logo consistent across print, web, and mobile, font selections on your web page and brochures are flexible. According to Blue Train Mobile, one of the biggest typographic design sins are developers choosing print- or web-safe fonts, and not mobile optimized fonts. When you mismatch your font selection to your medium, you run the risk of making it harder for your customers to read your marketing material, or coming off as unprofessional.

Personality and Emotion

Fonts convey a great deal of personality and emotion. When you look at Waltograph, the font used by Disney, you think of cartoons, amusement parks, and child-like fun. Men in Blue is the IBM font, which comes across as easily recognizable, professional, and tech-based.

Take a good look at the fonts you're currently using for your logos and other marketing graphics, and examine what personality it conveys. If it doesn't match your marketing goals, examine the possibility of re-branding. Establish what personality you want for your business and choose a font with that in mind.

Faizan Ahmad

About the Author:
This article is posted by Faizan who is the Author and Founder of TechSenser. He is a Professional Blogger from India and a passionate writer about Technology, Gadgets, How-to-Guides, etc. You can connect him on Google+.