How to Choose the Right Fonts For Your Next Project

Do you have a hard time choosing the right typefaces for your design projects? Is it hard for you to figure out which fonts complement one another? We’re here to help with a simple guide on “how to choose fonts” and font combinations that are purposeful, on-brand, and legible. 

Connect Your Font Choice to Your Brand’s Tone: 

It’s important to remember that every design choice should be purposeful. The same goes for font choice. The right font will speak the same language as your target audience. For example, suppose your audience is a group of professionals seeking new computer software. In that case, they are more likely to appreciate a more classic and simplistic font. In contrast, a group of parents seeking childcare services is more likely to appreciate hand-drawn and colorful typefaces. Think about your brand tone connected with the design and choose a font that would best match your brand’s tone of voice. 

Keep Legibility and Readability in Mind:

It’s essential to have clarity at the forefront of your font choice. Although there are many beautiful script fonts out there, they aren’t the easiest to read. This can distract your audience and cause the communication goal you are seeking to be disrupted. A good tip to ensure adequate legibility is to bring your font size down to 10px and check whether or not it is still legible at such a small size. These tend to be fonts with generous spacing between each letter allowing our reader’s eyes to move swiftly through the text. 

Color: 

Color plays a large role in font choice as well. Playing it safe with a black font against a light background or a white font against a dark background is never a bad idea. However, if you’re seeking to make your fonts stand out over the background, a colorful font can be the way to go. Just make sure your design background stays simple, so it isn’t clashing with the bright font choice. 

Keep up with Trends:

When choosing the right fonts, remember, just like everything else, fonts come in and out of style often. It’s essential to ensure that your brand looks up-to-date to meet the industry standard of what is considered new and contemporary. A great way to do so is by reading typography magazines, blogs, and content online that advises on what is currently in style in terms of font choice and combinations. 

Don’t be afraid to use two fonts:

A good font combination is excellent for content with body copy and headlines. It can be challenging to find two fonts that pair perfectly with one another. Thankfully, fonts called “super-families” can make font choice a little bit easier for us. Super-families are font families that come in both a serif and sans-serif option in various weights, widths, and styles. Some great super-families include: Storyteller, Helvetica Neue, Roboto, Montserrat, and Alegreya. Choosing two of these for your font combination is pretty foolproof. However, if you seek to go the extra mile, it is a great idea to add some contrast with your font combination. This creates a clear distinction between headline and body copy for the viewer of the content. Have fun with this! Even the most contrasting fonts can sometimes look well together, but a good rule of thumb is to use bold font with spaced letters for the headline and a more condensed and light font for the body copy. 

Seek Help!

Looking to your peers for advice and feedback is always a good idea. These people don’t even have to have any design experience. The goal is to see whether your font choice would be easy on the eyes of your target audience. Getting reactions from your peers is the best way to see whether your design choices make sense in terms of clarity. 

We hope this inspires you to see fonts as more than just the words we read on a website, flyer, or graphic. Fonts have the power to communicate beyond the copy. Remember, a careful selection choice should go into choosing the font styles of every design project. 

Grova Creative is a woman, minority, and veteran-owned agency headquartered in Tallahassee, Florida, and works with clients all across the United States. If you are a business or organization seeking help with advertising, marketing, branding, messaging, marketing, strategy, website development, or other creative assets, visit grova.com.