A Starting Guide

We have already gone over how essential your font choice is to defining your brand.
Now let’s learn some basic terminology to help talk about fonts, so you can feel confident talking with your designers about your needs!

We’ll be introducing you to the main 3 font families, which all fonts can more or less be put into. Then we’ll give the general mental connotations each family has, so you can decide which styles might match your brand identity!

Sans Serif

Sans-Serif fonts do not have serifs on them, giving them a cleaner and less formal look. These fonts likewise are great for any purpose, and have many options available. Sans-serif fonts are even easier to read than serif fonts though, which make them the #1 option for informational text.

Sans-serif fonts were invented in the early 19th century, but only really gained popularity as we moved into the 1900’s. Because of their relatively recent history, sans-serif fonts tend to be connotated with modernity & universality.
You’ll likely see many “futuristic” fonts fall into the sans serif family.

Leading & Kerning

Leading is the sizing between lines of text, usually between 1x or 2x the size of the letters.
Giving a text block larger leading provides the font room to breathe, reducing surrounding noise and making it much easier to read.

Kerning is the space between each letter, generally only changed for accent text.
It’s important to be careful when changing the kerning of a font, because you’ll often find it hard to make the font look as good as with its default kerning. With that in mind, think about changing kerning for more design heavy uses, such as logos.

Overall…

There are many different fonts out there to check out- so take your time looking around the many extensive free font libraries, like our favorite: Google Fonts!

From unique decorative script fonts to plain body text serifs, understanding basic font terminology will help you make better design choices for your brand.