I hope you’re ready to nerd out with me ’cause we are going to go deep into the psychology of visual branding and talk about the psychology of different font selections that you can make for your IELTS brand.
My name is Gurpreet Singh, I’m an Education business expert and Brand Strategist. I’m so excited that you are here. I help entrepreneurs like you change the world using what YOU KNOW.
In this blog, we’re going to cover the three major font categories so you can start to see them in your everyday life and you can make educated decisions about what is going to best communicate your brand.
Now, there’s been a bunch of different studies on this. Essentially, our brain looks for patterns, we look to make associations with what we’re seeing and connect it to what we’ve seen in the past. So, all of these associations are built over time and you can tap into some of these already-true associations to tell people something about your brand.
The key here is to build your brand on truth, not on trends, so especially in the font world, things come and go out of style.
But, if you’re choosing something based on the psychological narrative, like how you want people to feel, what you want them to understand about your brand, you’re going to be making a selection that lasts the test of time.
So, let’s go into the three types.
Serif fonts
The first type is serif fonts. Serif fonts are the ones that have little pieces at the end of them. Think about reading any book in your library or the New York Times, or Vogue magazine. The signature font in the timeless print publications and books that we see are serif fonts.
For that reason, we can get a few different associations from it. First of all, it feels very timeless, kind of stylish, it’s not going to go out of style. It’s not something that’s trendy or modern, if anything, it’s more traditional and formal.
To give you a common example of a serif that is very well-known, you could think of Times New Roman. So, if you want to communicate to people that you aren’t going anywhere, that they can trust you no matter what, and that your product or service is worth the reassuringly high prices that you charge, a serif font would probably be a great primary brand font for you.
Sans serif fonts
The second major category of font is the sans serif. This doesn’t have the little pieces at the ends of the font. You see these fonts online and on websites a lot more often. And for that reason, they feel more modern.
To give you a very common example of a sans serif that most people know, it would be something like Arial.
Now, these fonts are very versatile. They tend to be more modern, so they give a more youthful vibe, a more casual vibe. These fonts are very versatile, so you can pair them with other fonts that have more of an expressive personality to give them more balance.
Script fonts
The third major category of font is the script fonts or any of the handwritten fonts.
Think about, Kellogg’s cereal or Instagram, their logos feature script fonts.
These tend to be more casual, more welcoming, sometimes they’re more feminine, but it’s not always that way because if you have a graffiti-style script, it’s going to give you a very different emotion than a script that was written on a love letter, or by a child.
All of these have very different meanings and associations. But in general, the script fonts are something that should be used more sparingly because they are quite loud psychologically, they tell us a lot because they have a lot of extra context in them.
They’re not usually as readable, so it’s not something that you want to use for long headlines, and definitely not for your body paragraphs, but as that additional context or additional flare to give your brand a very distinctive flavor and some interest, a script font can be a great addition.
Decorative fonts
Let’s add a bonus, a catch-all to the end here. So, those are the three major types of fonts and the personalities that are associated with each, but there’s also something that I like to call decorative fonts.
Sometimes, script fonts can fall under this, but it’s not necessarily so. These are the ones that are just kind of weird. So sometimes, they look very modern, sometimes they look like, the old west, sometimes they look very decorative, like flowers drawn into the letters. These are all display fonts, and similar to a script.
They should be used very sparingly, but they can be an effective way to add a lot of personality to your brand.
You have to be careful with decorative fonts, though, because they tend to go out of style relatively quickly and you don’t want to do anything that’s too trendy in the primary expression of your brand. Maybe use it for a campaign or maybe a specific product that you’re releasing now and it’s not gonna stay around for a long time, but I would stick to the serif fonts, the sans serif fonts, and the script fonts for anything that’s going to be primary to your brand. And keep in mind, there’s a bunch of different style choices that you can make with the fonts and the type that you’re using to convey different things as well.
A very bold font is gonna feel very strong and sturdy, where a very skinny, dainty font is gonna feel more airy, modern, and light.
Fonts that are very squished together and condensed, it’s called kerning, but we won’t go there.
All squished together, they feel very frantic, very high-energy, whereas fonts that are very spread out, again, they have a more luxurious feel, like a more relaxed, confident feel, because they have all of that space between the letters.
If you use all-caps fonts, sometimes those can feel like you’re shouting at people, but more often, especially when you’re using them for headlines, it feels more strong, more assertive, and sometimes, depending on the font that you’re using, sometimes the all-caps just looks more clean, so it almost blends into
the background a little bit.
So, if you have a lot of other loud design elements, choosing all caps might be a nice way to just make the visual effect very clean. If you do something like use only lowercase in your text, say in your headlines or your logo, that adds a very casual feel, it’s playful, it’s unexpected like you’re not following the rules, you’re using all lowercase.
So, I hope this gives you some ideas of what to look for as you’re out in the world seeing these different fonts and choosing the right one to communicate the right thing for your brand.
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And comment below, do you have a favorite font?
Have you selected one for your brand?
I would love to hear it. I am such a type and font nerd. Just trust me, I would love to see what you have selected and why you selected it. So, comment below with that, and have an awesome day.
