Understanding Font Theory

Design is very complex and there are so many different elements to design that can evoke emotion in your audience. Shapes, layouts, colors, models, music, and much more can heavily influence how a piece of design is perceived by an audience. Another one to add to this list is fonts. Fonts make a huge impact on your design, whether you want something to portray urgency, care, joy, or anything else in between. In this blog, we are breaking down fonts, font theory, and how it can impact your business. Keep reading to learn more about font theory and how to choose the right one for your brand.

Font vs Typeface: What’s the Difference?

Before we dive in, let’s clear up what we mean by “font.” There’s a big difference between fonts and typefaces, both of which are important, but fonts are the major heavy lifter when it comes to design and impact, as they are more specific. Here’s what we mean.

1. Typeface: The overall style of a set of characters in a family, including shapes, sizes, styles, and more.
2. Font: The specific shape, size, style, and more within the typeface.

Breakdown of typefaces:

• Serif. These fonts offer slight projections added to the ends of strokes to make the font feel more sophisticated. The most popular and well-known serif font is Times New Roman.
• Sans-serif. As the name suggests, these fonts do not have a serif, or projections to the end of a stroke. The letter ends abruptly, allowing for a clean, minimalist font. Some popular, well-known sans-serif fonts that you may have heard of include Helvetica, Futura, Arial, and Gill Sans.
• Script. This type of font is meant to look like human cursive handwriting. There are many different styles of script fonts. They can be made to look more casual, like natural scribbled handwriting, or more polished, like calligraphy.
• Decorative. Decorative typefaces are exactly what the name suggests. There is truly no end to the creativity of decorative fonts, as they are meant to be seen as fun and exciting. They can often be difficult to read, so they are reserved more for headers or logos than block text.

What Fonts Can Convey

Depending on your business, goals, message, campaign objectives, and much more, there could be a wide number of things you want to convey with your message. Choosing the right font will help you effectively communicate this message, and knowing the difference between all the typefaces and fonts will be your first step.

• Luxury, relaxation, high-end. Serif fonts, thanks to their sophisticated nature, portray a more high-end look that is perfect for high fashion, expensive products, the beauty industry, and high-level services.
• Urgency. Need to grab attention quickly? You will want a bold, blocky sans-serif font. Sans-serif fonts take out the guesswork in what the word is and are much quicker to read. They offer more impact and are more abrupt, allowing you to get your message across quickly and without a doubt. Use a sans-serif font if you are having a flash sale or are approaching a deadline for users to make an action.
• Hunger. By and large, sans-serif fonts are ideal for food packaging. The font you choose within the sans-serif typeface will depend largely on your target audience and what type of product you are selling. Food for children will use a much different font than high-end, romantic chocolate. Children’s food might want something more decorative and fun, while the high-end chocolate company might want something more elegant in script.
• Cleanliness. If you check all of the cleaning products in your home, chances are, all of the fonts are sans-serif. Sans-serif fonts are inherently cleaner and minimalist, portraying the feeling that the cleaner will work well.
• Rebel-styles. If your business is more alternative—such as a barber shop, tattoo shop, skate shop, or the like—you may want something more decorative, such as Old English. This portrays a sense of sophistication while also putting its uniqueness on display.
• Sensitivity. Many companies—such as organizations that raise money for donations, healthcare companies, or organizations that work with animals—want to portray kindness and sensitivity. Serif fonts are a great way to convey trust and calmness in a reader.

Font Usage in Logo Design

When designing your logo, choosing the right font is imperative. Understanding your brand’s identity, mission statement, goals, and target audience all come into play. A professional graphic designer will help you choose the right font for your logo design and tweak it to make it your own.

There are many things to keep in mind when choosing a font for your logo design. These include making sure the font you choose is free for commercial use, or you obtain a license to use it. There are many laws in place when it comes to logo and font usage. In addition, when creating a logo using a font, make sure you are able to edit it without running into a copyright issue.

• Serif logos. Some companies that use serif logos include Tiffany & Co, Wells Fargo, and Sony. These are high-end brands that want to portray luxury, comfort, and established trust.
• Sans-serif logos. Amazon, Google, and Jeep are examples of companies that use sans-serif fonts so they can appear to be more relaxed, accessible, and easy.
  Script logos. One of the most notable script logos is that of Coca-Cola. Brands that use script logos may be seeking a female buyer and want to portray history and a sense of elegance. A great example of a brand that uses script fonts and embodies all these things is Cadillac.
• Decorative logos. Some very famous logos that use decorative fonts include Disney and Lego. They are fun, exciting, childlike, and unique. You recognize it instantly anywhere in the world and are great to use as long as they are easy to read.

Font Usage in Website Design

When designing your website, there are many things to keep in mind when it comes to fonts. You don’t want to use too many; they need to be easy to read and beneficial for your SEO. It’s true: Font usage can impact your placement in search engines.

Here are some rules to keep in mind:

1. Limit your fonts to three or fewer. You will need to pick a font for headers and a font for body text, but that’s it. Limit your fonts to three or fewer, or else your website will start to look unprofessional and confusing.
2. Make sure they’re legible. The most important thing about websites is that they are easy to read. The gateway to achieving this is using either a serif or sans-serif font; stay away from decorative or script fonts with your website.
3. Keep height and spacing in mind. When letters and words are too spread out or too condensed, they become more difficult to read. Choose a simple font for your body text that your audience is already familiar with, such as Arial or Garamond.

How Fonts Impact Your SEO

How fonts impact your SEO could warrant its own blog; many things go into a font—yes, a font!—affecting your search engine placement.

1. Poor user experience. If your fonts are difficult to read, this will cause bounces in your traffic reports. An easy-to-read font will lead to longer sessions, more conversions, and faster page load times. The easiest way to achieve a poor user experience is a font that is too messy, small, difficult to read, and poorly placed.
2. Mobile-friendly. Fonts should be able to translate to mobile. If yours does not, the user’s phone may replace it with a different font that doesn’t match your brand aesthetic or conveys the wrong message. This can also impact your website’s design, possibly moving images around to where they shouldn’t be.
3. Readability. People aren’t the only ones reading your website; search engines and ADA software do, too. Make sure these translate and help search engines and other software crawl your website. The easier you make it for these programs, the more your website will be rewarded.
4. Load speed. Decorative fonts, fonts with animation, and fonts that are too large can slow down your website. Optimized fonts will make your load speed faster, helping your SEO placement.

The Best Font For Websites and SEO

At Navazon, we are partial to Variable Fonts. This is a new type of font that is lightweight (meaning that there is only one file for many weights as opposed to one file per font weight). Variable fonts are also already optimized for SEO, allowing for the best page load speeds possible. They are also ideal for ADA compliance, which widens your audience.

According to Google, the choice of exactly how heavy, slanted, or wide (or any other parameter) a type should be is placed into the hands of the user rather than having those decided for us by the type designer. Traditionally, all possible weights and styles have been separated out into different font files, whereas variable fonts combine all of those variations into one. Because of this, overall file size is greatly reduced compared to loading multiple individual font files—and that’s a key consideration for web typography.

Examples of Variable Fonts include:

• Arial
• ITC Serif Gothic
• Sterling
• Cougar
• Brachial

Google breaks it down like this:

1. The simplest way to think of variable fonts is to imagine a slider (actually called an axis), with the lightest weight (usually called something like Thin or ExtraLight) at one end, regular in the middle, and the heaviest weight (usually called something like ExtraBold or Black) at the other.
2. Where traditionally we’ve had to choose weights from specific points on that scale—determined by the type designer during font production—we can now choose any point on the scale.
3. Rather than decide between using a bold font at the value of 700 (which might not feel heavy enough), or an extra bold font at the value of 800 (which might feel too heavy), we can now choose somewhere in the middle, such as 742 – just right!

Get Your Fonts Right with Navazon Digital

Ready to convey the right message with your design? We are experts in that.

Navazon helps businesses increase profits through data-driven marketing that expands opportunities and reduces risk. As marketers and entrepreneurs, we understand the value of developing a memorable brand through creativity and consistency.

We create your brand’s identity through targeted graphics, videos, and websites that reflect our proven, time-tested methodologies and detailed analytics. This approach has proven effective for companies of all sizes, from start-ups and medium-sized businesses to large firms with an international presence.

We are content creators who listen to our clients so that we can formulate ideas and strategies based on their unique goals and philosophies. Thinking through those goals with our analytics-based approach, we study not only their tendencies but also those of their competition and the market as a whole.

Equipped with this knowledge, we develop a powerful plan, test it, and then roll it out on a modest scale. Once we arrive at the winning formula, we can scale up rapidly to meet even the most optimistic growth projections.

Navazon does not believe in “one size fits all.” Every part of the marketing plan is customized to address your unique niche and positioning strategy. It’s how we excel. It’s why we succeed.

Schedule a free consultation with us now! Visit us at navazondigital.com for more information.