Brand Fonts Guide – 8 Pro Tips for Choosing & Using Yours

Choosing and using the right brand fonts is a detail that separates design amateurs from the pros. When used well, fonts have the power to communicate your brand personality and build trust and awareness with your target audience.

You might be wondering:

What is a brand font? It simply refers to the fonts you’ll choose to use in your visual designs and communications. A good rule of thumb is to choose between 1-3 font families (any more and things can get messy) and use them consistently.

Here are 8 typography tips that’ll help you level-up your design game and get you feeling more confident with fonts and looking like a pro!

PRO-TIP #1:
Use Caution When Using Free Fonts For Your Brand

You should know:

There are good fonts and there are bad fonts, and it can take a trained eye to know the difference. After spending hours and hours of my life creating letters by hand and editing existing fonts for customized logos, I’m able to see poorly-constructed fonts from a mile away.

You, however, probably have an actual life.

Unfortunately, a lot of the poorly-made fonts are the ones you find available for free, so be careful with those.

Fun fact: a lot of free fonts you find online do not come with a commercial license — they’re for “demo” or personal use only. Always check the EULA (end user license agreement) when using fonts for your business.

As a rule, I avoid sites like “Dafont” and “1001 Free Fonts” for this reason. FontSquirrel is a bit better, but I prefer commercial sites like Creative Market, TheHungryJpeg and FontBundles.net — all have free (and cheap) font options you can use for business!

Google Fonts are a safe resource to look for free fonts for your brand because they’re mostly all covered by the SIL Open Font License, making them free for commercial use. I’ve scoured them all and while there are some really lovely options, there’s a lot of junk there too.

If you plan on using Google Fonts for branding or design projects – grab my Font Personality Swipe File — it’s an 86-page .pdf that includes 75 Google font combinations categorized according to your brand personality type. (Included is an exercise so you can determine your type.)

I created it because I got tired of spending so much time hunting through them all to find the gems, it should save you a ton of time.

Script and handwriting fonts are particularly problematic — the jankiest free fonts around fall under these categories and you can spend all day trying to find a font that’ll do the job.

Grab my swipe files below to get a list of the fonts that pass my font-snobbery tests. 😉

PRO-TIP #2:
Play it safe by using brand fonts professional designers depend on

It may surprise you that most professional designers don’t use hundreds and thousands of fonts in their work. Ask any professional designer what fonts they love most and you’ll hear all about their “go-to” fonts they mostly stick to.

Some people will insist that FUTURA IS THE ONLY FONT IN THE WORLD!!! and other designers will dig their heels in and prepare to battle it out because #HELVETICA4EVER.

But there’s always (always!) a ton of overlap in the billions of font debates I’ve been a part of. If you don’t have time to take a typography course or read a book about it, stick to what you know will make you look like a pro by using the fonts that professionals (mostly) agree on.

Go-To Commercial Brand Fonts

Once you know the fonts designers go to time and time again in their work because they trust the quality and timelessness, you can find fonts that will work as substitutes. (Like anything else, font designers are often “inspired by” other work.)

Some dupes come *close* and some are hack jobs (again, it requires an eye for detail). But some dupes are as good if not better than the original. For example, I own both Gotham (premium) and Montserrat (free) and I reach for Montserrat more often.

Check out these examples of dupes you can get at Google Fonts…

Cool, right?

If you don’t have hundreds (or even thousands!) to spend on premium fonts, grab my Font Dupe Directory for a listing of high-quality font substitutions.

A handy chart of fonts used by pros

Feel free to right click and “save as” or pin it for future reference.

In the left-hand column are fonts that may have come with your operating system; but if not, you’ll need to purchase them. In the right-hand column are options from Google fonts and those are free and available for commercial use—you can download any of them from fonts.google.com.

PRO-TIP #3:
Make Sure Your Font’s Personality Matches Your Brand’s Personality

This one is subjective and requires a bit of intuition, but you want the “vibe” of your typography to be aligned with the personality of your brand. You should like looking at your fonts, but do not base your font selections exclusively on the fonts you “like.”

Fonts have personality, and you’ll want to carefully select fonts that are in alignment with your brand personality.

I’ve you’ve never thought about a “brand personality,” what you’ll can do is pick an adjective that you can “own” to represent how you want others to feel about you/your company. For example Bold, Timeless, Fun, Reliable, Sophisticated, Free-spirited, Youthful, Zen, Dynamic…

Then, when you’re looking at fonts, ask yourself, “If this font were a person, how would I describe them?”

Looking at the examples below, which column is a better reflection of the personality of the font, right or left?

Crazy right?

If you want your brand to be perceived as “serious” … no matter how much you “like” these fonts, don’t use these fonts! 👇

There is nothing wrong with these fonts per se, they’re just wrong for a brand that wants to be perceived as serious. They’re communicating, “Playful, cool, youthful, fun!” and that’s not what you want.

A “serious” company doesn’t need to be boring. You don’t have to stick to your system fonts or play it safe with Times New Roman, just stick with one of the “tried and true” fonts (see pro tip #2).

Font Personality Inspiration: Feminine

Powered by Creative Market

Font Personality Inspiration: Whimsical

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Font Personality Inspiration: Masculine/Bold

Powered by Creative Market

PRO-TIP #4:
Use decorative brand fonts as an accent only

I love a decorative font. I sometimes sit here behind my computer screen secretly wishing and hoping that the perfect project will come along JUST SO I CAN USE A FONT. It’s a thing.

What do I mean by decorative font?

Basically, anything that’s not suitable to set body text with. They’re usually script- or handwritten-style fonts, but they’re sometimes display fonts like Abril Fatface. The purpose of decorative fonts is to use them as headlines, callouts, and artistic design elements.

When using fonts that are trendy and/or super stylized—proceed with caution. A lot of people get this horribly, horribly wrong.

Decorative fonts should be used as an accent, and should never be used to set large bodies of text—that’s not what they’re made for.

They are great for conveying a mood, adding a bit of flair, and providing you with a way to create design elements that will draw the readers’ attention… but when you overdo it, it creates chaos, visual clutter, and makes things unreadable. (BAD.)

No matter how much you love it, it’s not about you (it’s about the person reading it), so do them a favor and never do this 👇

It’s much more impactful to use stylized fonts in teeny tiny and strategic places—basically only when you need to set a few words (or just one!). This is the same font, better yes? 👌Not only does it make everything more pleasant for the reader, IMHO it elevates the font to a whole new classy level.

Bonus tip: never use ALL CAPS with a script font…

PRO-TIP #5:
Learn Some Kerning Basics

Kerning refers to the space between the letters in a word and designers adjust it because sometimes the “default” kerning that happens when you just start typing in your computer machine is totally jacked up optically. It’s a subtle difference that definitely separates the amateurs from the pros.

When you see some lovely design that’s basically just a font and you’re like, “Hey! When I use this font it doesn’t look anything like this!”—it’s probably because the designer paid meticulous attention to kerning.

Two scenarios where you need to pay particular attention to it:

1.) Your Logo

Here’s an example of kerning gone terribly wrong:

Getting the kerning just right is often what separates an “amateurish” logo from one that looks polished and professional. If you’re planning to design your own logo, do yourself a HUGE favor and spend a little time on this site practicing. I promise you you’ll never look at spaces between letters the same way again.

If you use Adobe Illustrator, you can use the “Optical” setting in your characters palette if you’re using serif or sans-serif fonts. I always kern logos manually but this gives you a much better result if you don’t feel confident doing that.

Further Reading: How To Design An Effective Logo

2.) When Using A Script Font

This is like dragging your nails on a chalkboard to designers… NEVER kern a script font so loosely (or at all, just don’t do it at all) that they don’t connect from one letter to the next as they were intended. When kerning script fonts in Adobe Illustrator, you’ll want to stick to “auto” (NOT optical) this time.

PRO-TIP #5:
It’s Okay To Stick To One Typeface For Your Brand

A lot of advice that gets floated around is that you NEED! THREE! FONTS! for your brand, but that’s hogwash. If you’re not comfortable with pairings fonts, you can absolutely pick one typeface and call it good.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say you probably should, because nothing causes visual disharmony more than using too many fonts that don’t belong together. Using one typeface means OF COURSE DUH the fonts will go together because they’re in the same family or typeface.

The difference between a typeface and a font

A typeface is a family of fonts, but that definition isn’t helpful because the way we use the word “font” and “typeface” these days is interchangeable, so here’s an example:

Arial is a typeface. Arial Regular, Arial Narrow, Arial Bold, Arial Black, and Arial Italic are all fonts within that typeface.

When you’re selecting a single typeface to use for your brand, you want to select one that has loads of fonts within that typeface to use for many different purposes: for headlines, body text, callouts, etc.

That means making sure it has lots of different weights and comes in italic as well (not all fonts do, and pressing the “italic button” in Microsoft Word or in WordPress is not the same thing as the italic version of the actual font).

When you’re using one font, you’ll use the different weights and styles to create the contrast you need to separate different text elements. Here’s an example using Fira Sans (a free Google font).👇

When using a font like Fira Sans, which comes in TONS of different weights and styles, you have the flexibility of “skipping” weights in order to create contrast (see below… and please note they’re not displaying in order so you’ll want to test drive them to see what’s what).

What I mean is, if I decide that my body text is going to be set in Regular, then I will “skip” at least two levels in weight to create my headline styles.

In the examples above, I chose Black (skipping a few levels up from Regular) and Thin (skipping a few levels below Regular). You can see depending on which way you skip (up/bolder or down/lighter) these fonts give off a completely different vibe to choose from depending on your brand personality.

Then I can skip at least two levels again to create the subhead styles, its weight will be smack-dab in the middle, so you can be sure that there’s plenty of contrast between both the body text as well as the headline styles. (Does that make sense?)

Here are some more versatile options from Google fonts that come in lots of different styles:

PRO-TIP #6:
When you’re pairing fonts, make sure there’s plenty of contrast

If you’re more adventurous and you want to use more than one font for your brand identity, make sure you choose fonts that go together and that there’s plenty of contrast between them.

The easiest way to do this is to pair a sans serif with a serif font. You can identify a serif font because they have small lines on the ends of the characters, sans-serifs do not.

I use two sans-serif fonts in my branding but you can see that there’s TONS of contrast between them when you compare my headlines and the body text.

When you’re new to design, and you’re not confident about what two sans-serifs will work together — or serifs for that matter, which are SUPER tricky and I’m not even sure I’ve ever pulled that off), it’s best to stick to the serif/sans-serif combo rule.

Here are some lovely font combinations you’re welcome to steal…

(You can also grab my more comprehensive Google Font swipe file.)

PRO-TIP #8:
Don’t Use Light/Delicate or Bold Fonts for Body Copy

I see people doing this quite a lot, especially with hairline and lightweight fonts. They look gorgeous when you’re not actually reading them, but they strain the eyes and when you cause discomfort, you have failed at design. Design is not making things look pretty, its job is to help you better communicate with your audience, not make it harder.

If you want to use light fonts or bold fonts, use them for headings instead.

Keep in mind that what’s readable to you is not readable to everyone… and nothing pisses off readers more than fonts that make you squint and struggle to figure out what the words are. DESIGN IS MEANT TO AID READABILITY, never sacrifice that for fancy.

When in doubt, post a mockup to Facebook or email 20 friends and say “what do you think about these fonts?” Feedback is always subjective, but if you’re getting a bunch of, “Holy shit I can’t even read this…” PICK A DIFFERENT FONT. There are so many lovely ones to choose from, after all. 🙂

I hope this helped you in your quest to find the perfect fonts for your brand!

Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!