Matching Your Brand with the Right Type

Access to a bounty of type fonts has created a new breed of freewheeling, devil-may-care, users of type. They are unschooled in the basics of type functionality and purpose, resulting in acts of offensive visual miscommunication.

Too many people are having far too much fun with type. They are not being discriminating. Any type will do. It seems that the more offbeat and funky the type, the better! The result is a marketplace of signs, billboards, ads, and brochures that are almost unreadable.

The importance of type in communication is being sacrificed in the attempt to be different or unusual. From point size to case usage; stretching letters to condensing words; to margin justifications that leave large unexplained gaps between letters and words.

Why is this important? Think about the amount of money you spend on printed advertising and business communications. Take a look at the way you use type. Is it effective? Could it be more effective? Does it communicate a feeling about your business, service, product or destination? Does it reinforce your brand?

As you consider how to use type and fonts in your advertising, keep in mind these rules of great design through type.

1. Be consistent in the use of type in all your marketing materials. The type style and fonts chosen are an integral part of your branding. If you keep changing the fonts and styles you use in different printed materials, you are not reinforcing your brand.
2. NEVER USE ALL UPPER CASE LETTERS IN LONG SECTIONS OF COPY. THE USE OF ALL UPPER CASE IS THE VISUAL EQUIVALENT OF YELLING AT SOMEONE. PLUS, IT IS REALLY HARD TO READ. Whew! That’s better.
3. Type has the power to influence the meaning and believability of words. Take the same headline, put it in different type styles, and the impact and believability of the headline will change because of the fonts you choose. Which of these fonts do you feel best fits the content of the headline?
   
4. Use a sans-serif font for short attention-getting phrases. Sans-serif is always best for burst and banner type. FREE! in sans-serif demands more attention than FREE! in serif.
   Sans-serif type refers to those fonts that have no flourishes or ticks on the end of the letters. Among the most commonly used are Arial, Helvetica, Geneva and Verdana.
   Serif type refers to fonts that have a line, curl, or stroke at the ends or bottoms of letters. Examples of serif fonts are Times New Roman, Bookman, Caslon, and Century.
5. Avoid printing type over images. It negates the effectiveness of both the image and the words. The image is difficult to see; the words are difficult to read.
6. Use for just one or two key words, if appropriate. Those words are then emphasized to communicate better because of the font. Keep the rest of the text in type that is easy to read. The same is true of unusual fonts that can help convey the message but will not work for long sections of type. “Sign up now for Classes” is a more interesting and compelling sentence by using a different font that conveys a visual message in the key words Greek History. The font visually reinforces the message.
7. In setting blocks of type, keep them flush left on your page or column. Even left margins give your text structure and makes it easier to read. Make the right side of your page or column ragged, which keeps it open and interesting due to the varying width of each line of type. This also increases readability.
   Pages and columns of text that are justified left and right, so that both margins are even, are much more boring to look at, and often create unusual spacing in the content – sometimes stretching words or inserting extra spaces to make the columns even. (The exception to this is newspapers, which use narrow columns and a small type size that make left/right justification easier.)
8. When deciding on fonts and type values, set up a standard hierarchy for the type. Pre-determine the fonts and type sizes for headlines, subheads, body copy, captions, callouts, and footnotes. It gives direction to your page design. Variations of size and font in your content help readers navigate through text, know what is most important, and decide how to pick and choose what to read. This keeps them engaged in your printed message.
9. Use cues in your type. Cues can be spatial indents at the beginning of paragraphs, different colors on words or letters in a word, a letter that is Significantly Larger than the rest of the word, a letter that is in a different style than the rest of the word or underlines, bolds and italics for words or phrases. Cues can let you control what the eye looks at first. Think of them as road signs that direct the reader to travel in the direction you choose.
10. When selecting fonts for Web sites, choose those that have been built out of pixels for a screen display medium. In 1996 Microsoft commissioned Matthew Carter to design a sans-serif and a serif font specifically for digital displays. The result is Verdana and Georgia. There are six fonts that are especially useful for the Web. They are Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Comic Sans, Trebuchet MS and Times New Roman. The Muse is sent in Arial, one of our favorite and most recommended Web fonts.

Type is an essential element of communication – in signs, billboards, logos, books, ads, Web sites, and any form of a printed message. The style, shape, color, spacing, and formatting of letters and words determine the ease of reading and convey a message about your brand. To make communication happen, it is very important to know your type!

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