10 Best Pro Fonts for Clean and Minimalist Logo Design

Published in

JUST Creative

9 min readApr 10, 2018

This article was contributed by Arek Dvornechuck.

If you have a clean and minimalist style in mind when designing your logo, a simplistic approach to typography is essential to achieve that look.

There’s no doubt that these iconic logo designers would agree that minimalism and simplicity is what makes a logo timeless and memorable. See here for what makes a good logo.

Searching for clean and minimalist typography for your logo might be overwhelming given the number of sans-serif typefaces available out there.

As a design concept, minimalism is driven by the idea that less is more. The fonts are stripped down to only the essential elements, and what’s left is presented in the simplest way possible, without extra embellishments.

See here for the top serif logos for logo design.

10 Best Fonts for Clean & Minimal Logo Design

10 Best FREE Fonts for Clean & Minimal Logo Design

Looking for some free alternatives to the above? Here are a few of the best free fonts for logo design & branding.

Montserrat
Nexa (Light & Bold only) Full family here
Bebas Neue
Exo 2
Raleway
Roboto
Open Sans
Titillium Web
Ubuntu
Lato

Simple is smart as they say. And minimalism is one of the principles of effective logo design. So without further ado, check out the best 10 fonts for minimalist and clean logo design, perfect for corporate or business logos.

The list below comes with a font preview, short description and a link to the example of font used in logo design.

1. Brandon Grotesque

Brandon Grotesque has a functional look with a warm touch.

It is a sans serif type family of six weights plus matching italics and was designed by Hannes von Döhren in 2009/10.

Brandon Grotesque is equipped for complex, professional typography and you can make wonders when used for contemporary looking logo design.

The Brandon Grotesque font is based on geometric forms that have been optically corrected for better legibility.

See an example of this font being used by Mariusz Ciesla in logo for Conc.pt

2. FF DIN®

The FF Din font family has a whopping 20 weights with a rounded font version.

They range from Light to Black in normal and condensed styles (including italics).

FF DIN provides advanced typographical support with features such as case-sensitive forms, fractions, super- and subscript characters, and stylistic alternates.

The font is ideally suited for logo and brand identity design.

An example? — check FF Din used in logo design by David Edward Clark.

In 2011, FF DIN was added to the MoMA Architecture and Design Collection in New York.

3. Proxima Nova

If the 20 styles of FF Din wasn’t enough for you, here’s the 48 styles of Proxima Nova.

That’s a huge collection of fonts at your disposal.

The Proxima Nova family is a complete reworking of Proxima Sans (1994) in which the original six fonts have been expanded to 48 fonts.

There are three widths: Proxima Nova, Proxima Nova Condensed, and Proxima Nova Extra Condensed and each width consists of 16 fonts — seven weights with matching italics.

Stylistically, Proxima Nova straddles the gap between typefaces like Futura and classic sans faces.

The result of that is a hybrid combining humanistic proportions with a somewhat geometric appearance.

See an example of Proxima Nova in logo by Nils Urbanus, or the logo of JUST Creative.

4. Gilroy™

Gilroy is a modern sans serif with a geometric touch.

It comes in 20 weights, 10 uprights and its matching italics.

It’s a beautiful geometric, clean and minimalist font.

The Light & ExtraBold weights are free of charge, so you can use them to your heart’s content.

This geometric and simplistic font is perfectly suited for any graphic design, especially brand marks.

It could easily work for web, signage, and corporate identity.

Check Gilroy in logo for carwao on Arek’s dribbble profile:

5. Mont™

Mont is a geometric sans serif, minimalist font consisting of 10 weights.

Ranging from Hairline to Black with matching italics.

It supports Extended Latin, Cyrillic and Greek — more than 130 languages all together.

The balanced characteristic of Mont with unique details, such as the pointed “t” and the prominent x-height makes it perfect for strong headlines and outstanding logos, but also suitable for long text.

The characteristic features and unique details makes it a perfect choice for logo and identity.

Mont comes with a range of OpenType features — including tabular figures, advanced typographic features such as ligatures, fractions, case-sensitive forms, superscripts, subscripts etc.

The typefaceʼs versatility and merits make it easy to confront basically any graphic design challenge — logo, web, print, motion graphics etc.

Check the Mont font being used for a city branding here.

Up with Mont to the top and beyond!

6. Avenir Next®

Avenir Next Pro is a new take on a classic face — it’s the result of a project whose goal was to take a beautifully designed sans and update it.

The update was done in a way so that its technical standards surpass the status quo, leaving us with a truly superior sans family.

This family is not only an update though, in fact it is the expansion of the original concept that takes the Avenir Next design to the next level.

In addition to the standard styles ranging from ultra light to heavy, this 32-font collection offers condensed faces that rival any other sans on the market in on and off — screen readability

The heavy weights have the ability to pair well with serif body types — perfect choice for branding.

Overall, the family’s design is clean, straightforward and works brilliantly for blocks of copy and headlines alike. Akira Kobayashi worked alongside Avenir’s esteemed creator Adrian Frutiger to bring Avenir Next Pro to life.

It was Akira’s ability to bring his own finesse and ideas for expansion into the project while remaining true to Frutiger’s original intent, that makes this not just a modern typeface, but one ahead of its time.

See Avenir Next in logo design by Phil Goodwin

7. Cera Pro™

The Cera Font is driven by pure geometry and simplicity.

The font family contains the bestselling Cera Pro, its stenciled counterpart Cera Stencil, the hand-crafted display companion Cera Brush and Cera Round Pro.

With six weights, a clean italic — carefully slanted 10 degrees — useful dingbats and arrows.

Cera font is a steadfast companion for when you need to set clean text and headlines in print, on screen and in multiple languages.

For best on-screen performance, the TrueType files for web and desktop fonts have been manually hinted.

The font is supporting pure geometry and will surely make an impact when used for logotypes

The pan-European Cera PRO supports the Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts.

With over 980 glyphs per weight, Cera cares about localized letterforms and has the OpenType features to match.

Check an example of logo design that use Cera Pro font:

8. Panton

The Panton font family includes 36 weights — 10 uprights with 10 italics and 16 icon sets as a bonus.

It is characterized by excellent legibility in both web & print design areas.

Inspired by the classic grotesque typefaces — Panton has his own unique style, expressed in perfectly softened geometric forms.

A well-finished geometric designs, optimized kerning, excellent legibility for logos

The font family is most suitable for headlines of all sizes, as well as for text blocks that come in both maximum and minimum variations.

Panton font styles are applicable for any type of graphic design in web, print, motion graphics etc and perfect for t-shirts and other items like posters and logos.

See the Panton font used in logo design.

9. TT Commons

TT Commons is a universal sans serif with a minimal contrast of strokes, a closed aperture and geometric shapes of characters.

The design of the typeface was developed for the widest possible range of tasks with which any quality corporate font is required to cope.

The history of TT Commons originates from the new TypeType logo, which appeared in late 2016 as part of the rebranding project.

Ideas embedded in the logo formed the basis of two fully developed faces (regular and medium), which in early 2017 became the official corporate typeface of the TypeType Foundry.

Low contrast strokes and averaged drawing of letters makes TT Commons perfect for branding

On the other hand, an individually developed design of each glyph makes it possible to use it successfully as a display font.

The typeface intentionally does not have distinctive decorative details. On the contrary, it wins hearts with his laconism, simplicity and sharpness of forms, which set the seasoned corporate style for years to come.

See TT Commons used in brand identity.

10. Museo Sans™

Museo Sans is based on the well-known Museo.

It is a sturdy, low contrast, geometric, highly legible sans serif typeface very well suited for any display and text use.

The font was designed by Jos Buivenga and this is his most known work so far.

This OpenType font family offers also support for CE languages and even Esperanto.

The Museo font projects minimalist look & feel when used in trademark design

Besides ligatures, automatic fractions, proportional/tabular lining and old-style figures, numerators, denominators, superiors, and inferiors.

Museo Sans font family comes in 10 fonts: 5 weights (100 300 500 700 900) with each an italic.

From which the 100 and the 900 weights are totally free.

See the font being used for logo design by Mark Grow.

Best Fonts for Clean Logo Design

In order to achieve a clean and minimalist look in logo & brand identity design, you should rely on simple and geometric sans-serif fonts like the collection above.

There are multitude of well-designed sans-serif fonts, but I hope this best selling collection will inspire you in the process of logo design.

What’s your favorite clean & minimalist font for logo design?

Let us know in the comments below.