Building Brand Cohesion Through Typeface and Font
Clear and concise brand consistency ensures brand cohesion across all marketing collateral that your business creates. This is especially important as your business grows and your target customers become accustomed to your brand imagery and voice. The last thing you want is for a customer to confuse you with a competitor.
This week we’ll be covering the importance of a good typeface and how to integrate it with both your business and your brand guidelines. Be sure to read our other articles on creating an effective brand guideline for your business if you haven’t already!
Typeface vs Font
In recent years, typeface and font have become synonymous with one another. While the distinction does not matter much for the average person, knowing the difference is critical when putting together your brand guidelines.
In short, typeface refers to the design and look of a given character set. When people today say “font”, they are almost always referring to a typeface. Common examples of typefaces include Times New Roman, Helvetica, and Arial.
While typeface refers to an entire character set, font refers to the appearance and style of the individual characters within that set. These visual variations include things such as weight, kerning, and the size of the individual characters.
One must be mindful of the types of content that they plan on creating for their business, along with the preferred mediums that will be used to present this information. Will you spend most of your time writing blogs for your website? Planning on creating print advertising like postcards and brochures for your customers? What looks good on a screen may not look good in print.
Google Fonts is a great source for web-friendly typefaces that you can use for your website and marketing collateral. Best part? They’re free! Choose a few you like and experiment with them until you find something that looks good and reads well.
Your Brand Guidelines
Once you’ve found a few typefaces that you like, be sure to include them within your brand guidelines and include examples of when to use each one.
This will include any and all font variations that your business uses. Specify which fonts to use and where it’s okay to use them. An example of this would be only using Helvetica Light for print content while Helvetica Regular is reserved for website and social media graphics.
Be sure to include any backup typefaces in case the ones you have chosen are unavailable for others. This is critical if you outsource any marketing collateral work. Clear brand guidelines ensure you receive valuable work that matches your brand. This gives content creators a bit of flexibility with what they create on behalf of your business. Choosing a typeface from Google will make it easy for others to find the same typeface you’re using. Be wary of using expensive or exclusive typefaces that others may not easily be able to access.
Conclusion
Consistent typeface and font ensures brand cohesion across all of your marketing collateral, which in turn helps you stand out among your customer’s overflowing email inbox or coupon-loaded mailbox. Be sure to check back next week on the importance of color and branding for your business. Check out our services to see how Star Fox Media can help your business grow! Feel free to shoot us a message and we’ll get to you shortly!
