Typography: Awesome Fonts for Creative Branding
Well-chosen typography can take your branding designs from so-so to spectacular, but choosing the right font to use in logo design, and across stationery and marketing materials can seem a daunting task.
If you’ve got a creative company—perhaps a graphic designer, an architecture firm or an artist’s studio—in need of a fresh brand look, let InDesignSkills give you some inspirational suggestions for the typeface to try.
1. Try Out the Best of Both Worlds…
…Professional-looking fonts certainly don’t need to be dull!
Particularly if you’re designing marketing or branding materials for a creative individual or company, you want the typeface to strike the perfect balance of minimal professionalism and look-at-me creativity.
When Art Director Iñaki Saiz Roiz came to design the branding for architect Laura Solana, he turned to Futura Bold to give the logo and stationery a clean yet modern look.
2. Simple + Calligraphic = Branding Success!
Teaming a pair of fonts together, one more corporate, the other more decorative, can be a great choice for designing brands for more creative companies.
Here, for an Artist Management company, Australian Designer Matt Vergotis paired a clean sans serif for the bulk of text with a more decorative calligraphic typeface in the main logo. It makes for a really successful typographic team, and is a great formula to follow for your own brand designs—choose a calligraphic or brushstroke font that looks slick and modern, and pair with a more conservative sans serif. Job done!
For a similar look to the decorative calligraphic font used here, try out the classic-yet-modern Dynalight or the retro-inspired Yellowtail.
For the cleaner, corporate typeface, Matt used Ubuntu.
3. Make Retro Modern
The retro revival in typography keeps getting stronger by the day. An added bonus—retro fonts can give your brand designs a touch of nostalgia, which makes the brand seem instantly more appealing and emotive to the customer.
The key to using retro-inspired fonts successfully in creative branding is to keep them looking fresh and modern. None of those scratchy vintage textures or distressed effects—keep them crisp and polished for a corporate-appropriate vibe.
Also from Australian Designer Matt Vergotis comes this fantastic demonstration of using retro fonts in a modern way, for web development company Betafirm. To imitate the font, give Lobster a whirl, or take Pacifico for a spin.
We’re always on the lookout for new fonts that can make your InDesign work shine! Share your favourite fonts for creative branding in the comments below. Check out more font inspiration, for magazines, here.