Consider these tips when choosing fonts for your designs

Let’s talk about choosing fonts. Deciding which font to use for your design can be fun for some and challenging for others.

Here are a few things to consider when you are in the font decision process…

1) Your design goals should determine the type of fonts you choose

Having a solid understanding of the goals of your design will help you choose fonts that represent those goals. Each font conveys a certain mood. What mood are you trying to express? Is the project casual or formal? Fun or serious? Contemporary or traditional? Your fonts should match the mood you are trying to go for.

2) Focus on your message, then choose fonts that reinforce that message

What are you trying to say and how do you want to say it? Start with writing the content you want to use in your design. Then start choosing things like fonts and colors. Fonts reinforce the message of the text they’re used for and suit the purpose of that message. Don’t forget to start with the message.

3) The fonts you choose must be versatile enough for your design needs

Where will the font be used? On a website? Paper? Mobile? Can you get all of the range you need in your design system with one font family? Will the fonts be used at small or large sizes? For big blocks of text or just headlines? Will it be used across an entire brand’s marketing materials? Make a list of all of the ways the typeface will be utilized. Then make font decisions based off your list of needs and potential use cases. Font versatility is key. Typically, the font families with more weights and styles are the ones that are most versatile.

Additional things to consider

Other tactical things to consider before choosing a font:

• Languages - Will the text be translated into different languages? Will special characters be used? If translations or special characters are necessary, the font family needs to include them.
• Screen sizes - Fonts render in different ways on different screens and on different screen resolutions. Test the fonts out on those screens before landing on a decision.
• Multiple systems - Decide if it makes sense to have one unifying type system or different strategies for different use cases: for instance in-product vs. marketing website (where brand-personality may carry more weight).
• Access - If you’re choosing fonts for a company or organization make sure the people using the fonts daily will be able to access them easily. For example, if the company uses Google Slides you might want to make sure you choose from the Google Fonts available. If not, at least having a back up option for the fonts you choose is a must.

Thanks for reading!

Your feedback is always welcome

We’re always trying to make this typography newsletter as helpful as possible for creative people of all backgrounds and skills levels. We welcome any and all feedback on how we can improve! It’s as easy as responding via this email or sending a DM to @fontpair on Twitter.

✌️

Hayden Mills

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