Typography is incredibly important in design. When designing a brand, the typeface chosen to represent your brand is the key component in portraying the tone of voice of your brand. As I looked at last week, tone of voice is how you want to brand to speak and sound to it’s users, so picking a typeface which effectively coveys the tone you want your brand to speak in is extremely important. This was interesting to me as while I understood how important typography was, I never considered it’s additional impact within branding and I’m looking forward to seeing how this works this week.
I found some examples on the Brand New blog of old-school typographic styles used in modern brands and wanted to look at how they can use the same style differently. Two of the best examples I found were for “Alcoholic Vodka” and “Tugg”, both of which use Swiss Style typography. While both utilise the same style of typography, the two brands couldn't be more different in what they want to accomplish. Alcoholic Vodka is a vodka brand which promotes the negative side effects and dangers of alcohol to make the public aware, and the typography here is used in a clinical way which makes the branding feel like a medical document, which is really effective at achieving how they want the brand to be perceived. On the other hand, Tugg is a burger restaurant chain which also utilises this style but rather creates a funky and fun aesthetic which makes the restaurant appealing. This was really interesting as it showed me how old typography styles can be used in modern branding, and how similar styles can be used so differently and this is definitely something I will keep in mind in my own project work.
To begin thinking about the importance of typography in branding, I read “Meet Your Type” by Font Shop, a book that takes you through the process of picking the perfect typeface for a project. This was a really interesting read as it managed to break down the process of selecting a typeface into simple and relatable steps without taking away from the importance of the process. I think having read this will be really beneficial to me in this module's projects, and just generally in any project I will need to select a typeface for.
While researching typography in branding, I came across this article which raised some really interesting points about the usage of Sans-Serif typefaces in modern branding. The first point brought up about the usage of San-Serif is that they are used due to brands having less time to connect to their audiences. Essentially, the article makes out that due to people's lower attention spans and how many different brands now exist, there is less appeal for brands to stand out and rather now brands want to be as easily accessible in terms of engagement. The article also points out how the initial use of Sans-Serif typefaces in branding was used to appear modern and innovative, which I found interesting seeing as even now companies are rebranding using Sans-Serif even though everyone uses them now, making their brand which they want to portray as modern and different has now just joined the long list of Sans-Serif rebrands. While quite monotonous, as I said in the first point, Sans-Serifs do lead to easier engagement so although there is an aspect of all brands looking the same through Sans-Serifs, they clearly do work. Overall this was a really interesting article that made me consider the numerous rebrands that utilise Sans-Serif typefaces. I think this article has helped me consider typefaces more carefully. While Sans-Serifs might be right for a project, reading this will help me stop defaulting to them when looking for a typeface and should help me be more explorative and experimental with my typographical work.
As shown in “Meet Your Type”, every typeface has a unique personality which can be used to add deeper levels of engagement to your brand. I touched on earlier how a certain type of typeface can have particular typefaces, but understanding the personality of an individual typeface can allow for much better utilisation. For example, a group of Sans-Serif typefaces might all feel modern, but certain ones will feel more friendly, sleek, or fun, and understanding this can allow for a better choice when it comes to selecting a typeface for your brand. To help understand this, I created a user persona for a randomly chosen typeface.
