Brand typeface
What is a brand typeface?
A brand typeface is the font a company sets its words in: on the site, in quotes and proposals, on signs and on packaging. It is chosen for legibility at small sizes, for the alphabets it covers, for the number of weights it offers and for a licence that covers both print and the web. One family in two or three weights usually does the whole job.
Example
A delivery company is choosing between three typefaces. The first looks best in headlines but has no Cyrillic, which rules it out: the site and the invoices are in Bulgarian. The second covers Cyrillic, but it draws several letters in the default Russian shapes, which read as foreign in Bulgarian text. It stays on the list only because it also carries the Bulgarian forms, which appear once the page declares its language — and which in some families have to be switched on in the stylesheet. The third has those forms and six weights, more than anyone needs.
The choice is tested on real text rather than on the word “Heading”: a page from a quote, a line from a sign and a price list full of figures. Figures are the usual surprise, because in some typefaces they sit at different heights or different widths and the columns in a table stop lining up.
Why it matters for a business
After colour, type is the most recognisable part of a visual system and the first part to fall apart. The logo stays as drawn, but quotes get written in whatever the word processor opens with, and the sign gets set in whatever the print shop has. The result is a company that looks different on every document.
So the decision is practical, not only aesthetic. The typeface has to be available on the team’s machines, it needs a fallback for email and office documents, and its licence has to cover the uses ahead: print, the website, and an app if one is coming.
What to ask
- Which alphabets does it cover, and does it carry the local letterforms your market expects?
- How many weights will actually be used? Every extra weight is another file for the site and another line in the licence.
- What is the fallback for email, for office documents and for systems where the font cannot be installed?
- Does the licence cover print, web and an app, and whose name is it in?
- How does it look on a three-metre sign and in a ten-pixel line? Check both ends before sign-off.
The typeface is chosen alongside the palette and the rules for using both, as part of branding.