Font Psychology: The Importance of Typography in Branding
The significance of using the right font in a design is often neglected by those who don’t understand them. The importance of typography in branding is crucial to comprehend if you want your visuals to clearly deliver your brand’s identity.
Typography is the major element in a design that literally speaks to your customers. If you don’t know how to use them, then you might relay a different message than you wanted to. To know more, let’s dive deeper into the meaning of font psychology and why it matters in your marketing.
What is Font Psychology?
Whenever you are communicating visually, it’s important to acknowledge how the public will perceive and interpret your work. There are different ways to speak to your market through designs — you can use shapes, colours, lines, space, and even texture. All of these have the ability to evoke different emotions and perceptions.
Fonts in particular leave either a good or bad impression in the mind of an individual. For example: if you see a corporate company that uses Curlz MT as their font, what would your first impression be? Most of us might say that it looks improper for the corporate world. On the other hand, if you change the font to Bodoni instead, why does it feel like it builds more of our trust and confidence towards the brand?
That’s what font psychology is all about — it shows the importance of typography in branding by associating a specific font style to the thoughts and emotions of the viewer. Every font has its own identity, you need to find the right one that is in line with your brand’s persona.
Choosing the Right Font
The famous Gestalt Theory explains that the mind perceives visuals in six principles: closure, similarity, proximity, continuation, figure, and symmetry. This theory talks about how the human mind can see the design as a whole first before it sees the components individually. This is why each design element needs to complement each other in order for it to be successful.
If you look at a billboard, all of the design elements work together. The texture, shape, colour, and lines are perfectly in sync with each other that it’s pleasing to the eye — but if you choose a font that is inappropriate for the design, it can easily ruin the flow.
How To Choose the Correct Font
Now we know that the importance of typography should not be overlooked, the first step is to choose a font that can relay the same tone and emotion you want the viewer to feel. There are different font selections you can choose from:
1. Serif Fonts
Known as a traditional font — it originated back in the 15th century — serif fonts are the go-to fonts for brands that want to use a formal tone to their design. Examples of serif font styles are Times New Roman, Baskerville, and EB Garamond.
They’re known as serif fonts because of the small flick you can see at the top and bottom of the letters. It’s a popular choice for brands that want a professional tone to their image. The emotions serif fonts can provoke are trust, supremacy, and formality.
Serif fonts are commonly used by editorial magazines, financial institutions, jewelry lines, law firms, and schools.
2. San Serif Fonts
If you’re looking for a minimalist or tech-savvy font, san serif fonts are the best option for you. Unlike serif fonts, san serifs don’t have extra elements to them. It’s clean and readable style makes it a popular choice for companies that want a modern, innovative, trustworthy look as their brand.
San serif fonts are Open Sans, Lato, Arial, and Helvetica. Major corporations like Netflix, Google, and Spotify are known to use sans serif fonts for their branding.
3. Slab Serif Fonts
Slab serif fonts are similar to serif fonts but they’re bolder, larger in size, and a bit blockier than the traditional serif. These fonts are usually used to display hefty or dramatic tones that can be seen on headlines, advertisements, book covers, posters, and logos.
Popular slab serif fonts include Memphis, Serifa, Rockwell, Arvo, and Clarendon. Companies like Sony, Volvo, Honda.
4. Script Fonts
Unlike the serif fonts, script fonts add more pezzaz and detail to your design. They are created to mimic a person’s handwriting to give the design a personal touch. If it’s used right, it can make your post more playful and happy or elegant and traditional — depending on what your tone is supposed to be.
You can commonly see script fonts being used by Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Barbie, and Pinterest.
If you’re leaning more on something informal, you might want to try handwritten fonts. They’re a fun alternative to the traditional serif fonts if you want to go for an unorthodox look for your brand. It takes both quirkiness and sophistication to the next level. Handwritten fonts are commonly used for logos, social media posts or banners, t-shirt designs, or book covers.
Handwritten fonts vary from the following: Amatic SC, Shoreline, and Permanent Marker.
Using the right font gives you the upper hand to choose which emotions you want your viewers to feel. Here at My Wolf Design, we understand how important relaying the right message to your audience is. We can help you create designs that will leave a great lasting impression on your viewers.
