How to Choose Brand Fonts
Fonts are the part of a brand people feel but rarely name. A reader may not know why a poster looks expensive or why a menu looks cheap, but the typeface is often the reason. Here is how to choose brand fonts without a design degree.
Begin with the voice
Say your brand out loud. Is it calm, loud, precise, playful, old-fashioned? Type has the same range.
- Serif fonts, with small feet on the letters, feel traditional, editorial and warm.
- Sans-serif fonts feel modern, plain and direct.
- Rounded fonts feel friendly and informal.
- Condensed, heavy fonts feel bold and urgent.
A funeral home and a skate shop should not share a font, even if both would be happy with the same blue.
Use two fonts, rarely three
A reliable pattern is one font for headlines and another for body text. The headline font can have character. The body font must be easy to read in long lines and at small sizes. If you only want one font, pick one with several weights, so you can still show hierarchy with light, regular and bold.
Check these before you commit
- Does it have the weights you need?
- Does it support the languages you write in, including accents and any non-Latin scripts?
- Are numbers clear? Menus, prices and dates depend on them.
- Is the license suitable for everything you do: web, print, apps and social?
- Is a fallback available when the font cannot load, such as in email?
The license check is the one people skip, and it is the one that causes trouble later.
Set sizes once
Choose a headline size, a subheading size and a body size, and note the line spacing. For social posts, think in relative terms: a headline should be readable when the post is shrunk to a thumbnail. Keep text away from edges, using the safe areas in Keep Text Inside the Safe Area of a Story.
Pair with care
Pairing two very different fonts works when they contrast clearly: a heavy sans-serif headline with a quiet serif body, for example. Pairing two similar fonts looks like a mistake. If two choices feel almost the same, drop one.
Write the rules, not just the names
A font name on its own is not a rule. A rule is "headlines in the bold weight, sentence case, never all capitals; body in regular at a comfortable size". Add a line on what never to do, like stretching letters or adding outlines.
Prompts for narrowing your choice
Describe the typography for a handmade candle brand: should headlines be serif or sans-serif, which weights, and what should the body text look like? Give reasons in plain words.
I use a bold geometric font for headlines. Describe what kind of body font would pair well with it and what to avoid.
Use the answers to guide your search, then look at real samples before deciding.
In Melon Cut
You can attach fonts to a prompt in Melon Cut Design, and Melon Cut Guidelines keeps your fonts as part of the brand so pictures follow them. Always read any text on a generated picture before posting. For color decisions, see How to Choose Brand Colors.