How do I know what fonts to use?
My late grandmother made amazing cakes and no matter how often I followed a recipe for a Victoria sandwich cake, I never succeeded in an excellent cake. When I asked grannie, she told me to weigh the eggs and use that to calculate how much flour, butter and sugar to add. That was the trick. I don’t think she realised how important her baking experience was.
Last week, I was asked ‘how do I know what fonts to use’? And that started me thinking about what I know from my design experiences. My role is to guide you on what fonts (or any design principles) work well but it would be impossible to share all those years of learning and hands-on experience in a short summary. Fonts also need to be evaluated against the rest of your content. However, there are also some useful questions to ask and I’m sharing a few some of them below.
Is the product or brand message about sustainability? Eco-fonts might be a useful way approach and adds to the story. How often do you read about large brands changing fonts because the new identify suits their approach or values? PR and marketing teams know it’s a good story and you can do the same for any sized business.
Accessibility matters. A poorly designed sans serif won’t aid your readers any better than a passable serif one. I like the design principles of Scope’s brand font Hargreaves and their website lists their accessibility considerations as evidence. Producing print design at 12 point minimum (as advised by RNIB), paying attention to line length, the colour of the text and the background, using headings and subheads and page design to aid reader navigation are all part of the accessibility solution. I’m going to share accessibility considerations in design in the June issue of Gorgeous; you are welcome to sign up here to receive a copy in your inbox.
Knowing about the audience so the font is appropriate for use. In January 2022, Save The Children stopped using Gill Sans for their brand as Eric Gill, the designer of the typeface, is known to have abused his daughters. Taking some time to explore the background of the font, its creator and the font foundry is very important. Gill’s poor reputation preceded the introduction of his fonts to this brand and it was a huge oversight by the agency.
You may like to add the brand narrative by using a font from a foundry that supports a related charity. The Lost and Found font foundry created a font, FS Charity, designed by FontSmith and M&C Saatchi which supported The House of St Barnabas, a charity that supports social solutions to homelessness. You can see an example of the font in this Gorgeous Guide.
Where will the font be used? My branding fonts are a good example of how they work well as a logo, but you’d never want to read pages of text in the script font! I knew that when I created the logo. Book covers, despite having to often appear as thumbnails, can tolerate display fonts as they will almost always appear with title data, though I advise in keeping them as clear as you can especially for a series design. For websites, keep those fonts clear and crisp, and contain decorative fonts to the logo.
Knowing the range of a font; by this I mean any language variations. In my April issue of Gorgeous, I explained how few fonts are available for designers wanting to create books in Vietnamese. For The Association of Jewish Refugee My Story series, I suggested Adobe Caslon as it has Cyrillic characters so place names are transcribed accurately. Most online stores have an area where you can type in some text
Are there enough weights? Accessibility of fonts can be much improved if there are weights which are the heaviness or thickness of a font. For example, my branding fonts are LA Lux and LA serif and contain just one weight - regular. I also included fonts to work alongside them. That is Cormorant Garamond on my website headings and Open Sans for my body text. All have different weights with Open Sans as the most flexible as that has thirteen weights which include Light, Light Italics, Regular, Regular Italic… all the way to a heavy font.
Where are you using it? Canva recently signed an agreement with Monotype which is a huge font foundry established in 1887 and owns numerous small font foundries. There are more fonts on Canva than before. If you are using paid Canva, you can load your fonts to the site but you prefer free Canva, then check your chosen font or a decent equivalent is there to use. You can read more about the Canva and Monotype partnership in Gorgeous, April 2023.
Be mindful of differences. Your font for a website may not be great for a book or a logo. Fonts can be largely categorised into Display, Serif, Sans Serif, Slab Serif and Monospaced. As a general rule sans serif and serif are used for either body copy or headlines (including titles, logos, etc.), while script and display typefaces are only used for headlines. Monospaced typefaces are used for displaying code, though they can also be used for body and headline copy. Not all serif and sans serif typefaces are equally suitable for both body and headline copy. Different typefaces are more legible than others at small sizes, while others are more suitable for larger type. (This kind of information can generally be found in the commercial descriptions of the various types of fonts.) I wrote about monospace typeface, Monolisa, in Gorgeous, Feb 2023.
Finally, don’t get carried away. I love fonts so much and as a new designer, I’d want to use them everywhere or when the new thing I was like a magpie. The joy of fonts is that good choices stand the test of time. Baskerville was designed in 1750 and still used by Vogue. New fonts can be more appropriate but check that they aren’t a passing trend if you want a long serving font and make careful choices. Keeping an eye on what matters to you, and that may include ethics, social values and sustananbilty, will all help to keep you grounded.
Still not sure?
Book a fifteen minute free chat and let’s see if I can untangle your font problem.
Here's a few Gorgeous Guides to help you
How to use fonts to create the right reaction
Type tips for social media (written prior to Monotype becoming part of Canva)
I also share font news and advice in Gorgeous and I invite you to subscribe.