The Power of Your Font
In the fast-paced world of marketing where visual design is one of the most important aspects of how your brand is communicated and perceived, a font is never “just a font.” It’s a symbol of your brand’s identity and will be one of the first things people notice about your business. When you create your brand’s stylebook, your go-to brand font will be one of the most crucial design decisions you’ll have to make. Unique fonts, or typography, will grow to be synonymous with your business and act as a signpost for all future references or connections to your brand. Just look at Coca-Cola’s classic, retro loopy font that everyone immediately associates with the deliciously sugary beverage. Or even Ikea, with its bold and classic simplicity that entirely reflects the brand ethos.
As you can see, picking your font is a crucial decision — but the work doesn’t stop there. To help strengthen your brand’s unique identity, you need to be consistent with your font choice and utilize it strategically to grow your business and community. How? We’re here to discuss how choosing the right font can build up your brand’s recognition, reflect your core values, and help your business stand out in today’s competitive market.
Creates & Strengthens Brand Recognition
Choosing a brand font will not just create recognition for your brand, but also strengthen it. Brand recognition here refers to key iconography that customers associate with the company. For example, if someone sees a bold tick mark, they’ll immediately think of Nike. This is a powerful and successful example of brand recognition. While actual symbols in your logo matter, so does the font. From internal copy to advertisements, fonts are an easy way to create a brand identity that will strengthen over time. If you have five different fonts alternating between your social media campaigns, company letters, website, and logo, you’ll confuse your audience and greatly weaken your brand’s identity. By choosing and using just one or two fonts for all your copy, you can create strong brand recognition so that everyone understands exactly who you are and your brand identity doesn’t get lost between different copy designs.
Another critical aspect to remember when thinking about brand recognition through font is consistency. Your font will only be a powerful marketing tool if you commit to it. While revamps are a nice refresher of your brand, they can also destabilize your image. If you’re a small business with a lot of growth ahead of you, stick to your unique font for a few years to get some solid ground before you think of mixing it up and going through a rebrand. Alternatively, if you’re a big brand with a recognizable font, remember that your customers might not be happy if you change such a fundamental part of your identity. Remember how upset users got when Instagram changed its logo? You don’t want to enter the messy area of customer backlash.
Reflects Who You Are
Another great aspect of choosing a unique font for your brand: it reflects who you are. Brand fonts aren’t chosen at random, or at least they shouldn’t be. Companies put hours of thought, with months—if not years—of planning into figuring out what font best reflects their brand. This is a great chance for you and your team to figure out precisely what your ethos is and how to best communicate it to the general public. For example, Nutella, Adidas, Groupon, and Calvin Klein all use the same font: ITC Avant Garde. However, each has slightly modified the font to best reflect their brand. By changing the color, placement of the letters, and the spacing between the brand name and any iconography, each company has created an instantly recognizable font. Adidas wanted to use bold simplicity and thus increased the font’s thickness while reducing the space between the letters. On the other hand, Calvin Klein decided to slim the font down and capitalize the logo to create an elegant look. In each case, successful brands have used their fonts to best reflect who they are and what their products stand for, creating a strong brand identity and community around it.
Acts As A Tool To Stand Out
Last but not least, fonts are a great way to stand out in today’s competitive market and create your own instantly identifiable brand. Whether this means creating a new font with designers or using an existing one, your ultimate choice will reflect not only how your customers perceive you but how they see you against the rest. In a crowded marketplace, finding ways to differentiate yourself and your brand from competitors is essential. A unique and memorable brand font—in terms of its individuality, meaning, and relevance—can serve as a visual cue that sets you apart and helps you stand out in the minds of consumers. Ultimately, the font you choose creates a visual identity that leaves a lasting impression on customers.
To know how to stand out, you should know what others are doing. Many brands choose their font solely to reflect their product or service. For example, many bakeries and beauty brands go with whimsical fonts, while law firms would go with elegant yet bold ones. That’s not to say that a bakery can’t have a font like Gill Sans; in fact, that might be a great way to stand out! As with many aspects in business, you should keep in mind what your competition is doing to figure out whether you want to head in the same direction or if you want to shift gears and try something completely different. Research is key.
In the long run, a well-thought-out and carefully chosen brand font can play a crucial role in creating a lasting image for your company. Remember that fonts are an excellent opportunity to establish recognition, reflect brand values, and reinforce unique brand identity. Instead of looking at typography as just a design decision, remember that it is actually a business decision that will have a lasting effect on your company for years to come.
Always in your corner,
The Content Queens
