Leveraging The Power of Fonts in Your Designs.
This is the first of a two-part article on what fonts are and how to effectively use them to design and communicate effectively.
Fonts, fonts, fonts, they’re everywhere, they’re an integral part of any successful attempt at visual design. They’re part of flyers, infographics, logos, interface designs etc. They’re really important to the overall outlook of design and evoke different feelings depending on the type used but before we delve fully into the facts about typography, typefaces and fonts, we’d like to know what these terms mean.
Fonts:
This refers to a set of one particular face, type and weight i.e you could be using the Montserrat typeface and employ the use of either the size 14 medium weight or the size 12 extra lightweight font.
Typeface:
This refers to a particular design of type ie the overall design of all the fonts. Generally, typefaces are made up of various fonts e.g Montserrat, Bodoni, Arial.
Typography:
This refers to the theory and practice of letter and typeface design. It’s an art concerned with design elements applied to letters and text.
Often, we get to the see the terms ‘fonts’ and ‘typeface’ used interchangeably and though it’s permitted, it’s safe to know the difference between both.
There exist different font classes and these different classes are characterized by their appearances. They include:
Serif Fonts:
The word ‘serif’ is gotten from the dutch word ‘schreef’ which means pen stroke. These fonts are identified by ‘serifs’ ( extensions at the end of each letter) examples include Bodoni, Trajan, Playfair etc.
Sans Serif Fonts:
Sans serif means ‘without serif’ hence these typefaces do not have extensions on every letter, examples include Montserrat, Myriad Pro, Proxima nova etc
Script Fonts:
These are typefaces with a personal touch, they’re often calligraphic or handwritten typefaces and they’re usually decorative in nature examples include Zenith, Chopin Script, Sacramento etc.
Usage
Fonts are used for a wide variety of media and various contexts and are always employed to evoke certain feelings in your audience and in order to achieve that we use different typeface styles to suit our different purposes.
Serif fonts are employed in logos when seeking to establish history, authority and dependability, they also convey a feeling of quality, class, luxury, being proper & mannered (in some cases) examples of brands which use serif fonts include Rolex, Dior and Armani.
Serifs are also extensively used in print design because they’re easy to read. When combined with sans serif they give a balanced look.
Sans Serif fonts are employed when you ain to achieve a more modern and refined look ( with logos) they’re also used in print for bodies of text and headlines but they’re not as popular as the serifs examples of brands which use sans serif fonts include Facebook, Linkedin, Amazon etc
So, Fonts (Typefaces) evoke certain feelings depending on the type chosen. So ensure your font choice is made after proper study of the message you seek to pass across, the medium it’ll be viewed in and also, the context which it’ll be used. Effective consideration of the aforementioned would allow better font choices & pairings.
