Getting Personal with Brand Typography

Communication is an essential factor in everything we do. Whether you’re trying to create a relationship with an audience or simply connect with someone on a personal level, communication is key. Throughout history people have used different styles of writing for different types of communications. Ancient civilizations used hieroglyphs and pictograms to represent ideas, and these images soon evolved into alphabets and phonographic writing, which then led to the development of various typographic systems.

Today, typography is everywhere. In recent years, the awareness of it has become more prominent in mainstream culture than it used to be. Typography, in it’s simplest form, communicates by makes words readable. However, when executed the right way, it helps people and brands express ideas and engage feelings behind the words. This can have a crucial impact on brand’s personality and a designs effectiveness. You can almost think of typography like a coded message that can deliver all sorts of information to your audience. It can sometimes convey really important things that you can’t just tell your audience, such as “hey, we’re serious” or “we are fun and don’t take ourselves that seriously.”

Let’s explore a quick test on how we subconsciously evaluate fonts. Below you will see 3 different typographical logos of 3 different companies of the same name. One in as a gym, one is a pet hotel and one is a fine dining restaurant. Can you choose which is which? 

If you chose correctly, why did you do so? Did they just feel right or seem fitting? Do they just look good? Well, yes, but WHY did they feel right or just look good. Most people can’t articulate the reason because the mechanism occurs subconsciously, and this is something really important to be aware of as a designer.

We SEE type daily, but how well do we really listen to it or notice how it makes us feel?

Typography can have personality & actually speak, offering tone and voice. It can offer complexity or simplicity. It can be loud, or it can be subtle. It can be cute, clever, serious, bold, elegant and much more. Most of the traits we have the potential to offer as people, typography can do that too.

You may be familiar with the dating app Tinder. Just for fun, let’s see what a Tinder profile would look like for some common typefaces.