Choosing fonts for your brand can feel very overwhelming, especially if you aren’t a designer. You may be thinking to yourself, “what’s a serif?”, “where do you even get fonts?”, or “where do I start?” I’m hopeful that this comprehensive blog post will help you feel less intimidated, more excited, and give you a path to start creating successful font pairings.

Here are some things to consider when choosing fonts for your brand:

#1: Legibility

I don’t care how much personality a font has, if your audience can’t read it in its intended environment, that’ll hurt the brand. Legibility should be the first thing you consider when choosing a font. Simple is often best, and simple does not have to mean boring! There IS room for more complicated and visually interesting fonts, but these should be used sparingly and for decoration.

Take a look at the below example. The script fonts may be interesting to look at, but are they legible? At the very least, it will take you more time to decipher a sentence written in a script font than it would the simpler, bolder font. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use more visually interesting fonts for some uses, only that some fonts are better than others depending on the length, size, and color of the text.

#2: Visual Hierarchy

You’ll want to establish a successful visual hierarchy on every design you make. It’s simpler than it sounds! By changing the font weight (i.e. bold, italics, etc.), font size, all caps vs. lowercase, and color of the text you can easily establish visual hierarchy. However, you’ll want to have some flexibility, and not all fonts do. Script fonts rarely have multiple font weights, for example, and some fonts even have a wide range of regular, condensed, or wide options. See the below for visual examples of different font weights for the font called Open Sans:

#3: The Intended Use

In what environment(s) will this font be used? There’s a difference between designing small graphics for social media posts, as compared to large signs, highway billboards, printed flyers, or website graphics. Think about any novel — for the most part, you see the same few fonts in all printed and digital books. This is because human beings tend to do better with specific kinds of fonts when reading them in large paragraphs of text. That’s not to say that you can’t deviate from the norm, I just mention this to get you to consider why a certain kind of font may be common for certain uses, and to be intentional about what fonts you choose.

#4: Your Audience

Knowing your audience should help you make font decisions as well. Think about an elderly target audience, for example. Many individuals over the age of 65 struggle with vision issues, so using small text may not make sense for content written for them when printed, whereas a younger audience may do better with smaller text.

#5: Be Critical of Personal Preference

You may love feminine fonts, such as scripts or serifs with lots of curves, but does your audience? If your audience is gender neutral or more masculine, this could cause some visual dissonance. On the flip side, if your audience is mostly 12-25 year old women who are focused on hair and skincare, going a more feminine direction for your font choices may make more sense then using a more corporate, masculine font. If you have a question about if a font looks more “feminine” or “masculine” take a poll of your friends and family!

I want to also note that you should never expect to use fonts forever — like your business, your visual brand is allowed to evolve and change, so don’t feel that you are making a massive decision that can never be undone. More fonts are being created all the time, and the marketing industry is always changing. Your business is allowed to change too!

Here is some insight on the main font categories to help guide you in your decision:

FONT CATEGORIES

#1: Serif fonts

Tend to be either classical/traditional leaning in style with pronounced “serifs” (strokes) at the end of the letters
They were widely used with the printing press, making them some of the oldest fonts in the world
There are lots of sub categories within the serif group, such as slab serif, didone, and old style
Examples: Times New Roman, Cambria, Georgia

#2: Sans Serif fonts

Tend to be more simple in look and feel, with no serifs or strokes on the letters
Less variation in the letter styles
Many different sub categories within the sans serif group, such as geometric, humanist, and grotesque
Examples: Arial, Helvetica, Calibri

#3: Script fonts

Includes a wide range of styles, such as handwritten, calligraphic, or elegant
Should be used sparingly or as decorative fonts, as they tend to be tougher to read
Typically do not include multiple font weights (such as bold, italic, light, etc.)
Examples: Lobster, Dancing Script, Alex Brush

#4: Decorative/Display fonts

These share a lot of the same qualities of all of the other font classifications, but don’t fit well into one category only
Tend to have lots of embellishments and/or ornaments, things like shadows, textures, icons, etc.
In my opinion, these aren’t great fonts to use at all, so I would consider these last unless you have an intentional use case for them
Examples: see the below image for some random examples

So, how do you choose? Where can you find fonts?

Use a similar process as you would when choosing a color palette:

Consider your brand values and personality: what feelings do you want your brand fonts to give potential customers? What is your brand mission, and what values are important to both you and your clients? What fonts reflect those things?
Clarify your ideal client: the more specific you can get about this person, the better, because this is who you’ll be keeping in mind as you think about font choices.
Do industry research: have a good understanding of not only your industry, but who you’ll be competing with. What kinds of fonts are they using? Why do you think that is? How can you fit into your industry while also standing out? You can even create comparison axes where you compile all of the competitor logos and compare specific aspects of each. Things like how modern or outdated it looks, if it’s a serif, sans serif, or more decorative font, if it’s feminine vs. masculine vs. gender neutral, all caps vs. lowercase. etc.
Check out free font resources: If you use Canva, that’s a great place to start. You can use Canva’s font area to look within the different categories, or even use the search option to see what comes up. Other great font resources are below:

Some fonts are available on all of these platforms, whereas others are only available on some. If you have the proper license (you may have to purchase certain fonts to use them) you can upload them to your computer’s font area or to Canva’s Brand Kit.

Lastly, do some test runs! The easiest and least time-intensive way to do this is to simply make a copy of an existing design you’ve already used and start applying different fonts. You’ll quickly be able to tell if you need to make changes, and don’t be afraid to test out different font weights and sizes too. Some fonts work better larger, and others will need more space. It’s one thing to look at fonts when they are by themselves (or on an example graphic created by the font designer), and another to see it used with actual content.

You can do this with multiple fonts, and I urge you to do so. Keep them all in the same Canva file so you can easily scroll through them and compare.

Before I end, I want to also talk quickly about font combinations.

You may want to use 2-3 different fonts in your designs to not only make your design more visually interesting, but also to help with establishing a better visual hierarchy. There are many ways to go about font combinations, but the below concepts may help you to decide which direction to go in:

Using two fonts that are in the same family, but have different font weights. This is probably the simplest way to achieve visual hierarchy with fonts, and it ensures that your choices will work well together without a whole lot of thought. You can make these 2-3 fonts stand out from one another even more by using all caps or a wider/small letter spacing.
Using two fonts in the same family, but that are different classifications. This isn’t always an option, but for some fonts there are both serif and sans serif options, such as for Source Serif Pro in Canva. Similarly to suggestion #1, this easily achieves visual hierarchy amongst fonts and ensures that they will work well together.
Using two totally different fonts that have a vastly different look. This is the route to go if you want to ensure that there is clear contrast between the 2-3 fonts you are using.

This is NOT an easy task! That’s why designers like me even exist — because scrolling through hundreds of fonts is time-consuming, and most busy professionals do not have the luxury to do so. I say this because there is no simply way to choose fonts for anyone, and that it is inherently time-consuming. It’s why products like Canva have font combination options and tons of templates to choose from!

I always tell my small business owner clients to not overthink it, especially if you’re in the beginning of starting your business. It’s okay to choose a default font combination you found in Canva, as long as you’re intentional about how it will resonate with your target audience, and how you’ll be using it.

When it comes to visual brand recognition, repetition and consistency are key! As I’ve said before (and will continue to say) I highly suggest testing your fonts for at least 6 months before making any drastic changes.

I hope this blog post has been helpful! If you’ve got questions or need help creating your own font kit, I’m here for you! Simply reach out via the button below and let’s get it started!

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How to choose fonts for your brand