Practicalities when choosing fonts – working within boundaries

In this article I talk about choosing fonts, where to get them, and when to use paid for fonts versus free fonts. Design is often about working within boundaries rather than having complete creative freedom. This article is about the practicalities of choosing fonts with different boundaries in mind.

1 – Choosing fonts for impact – What difference can a font make

We choose fonts for their style. And there are many many fonts to choose from. This is often the first problem, we are flooded with choice.

Why not simply choose Arial, what difference does a font really make?

Arial does a good job; it is legible, clean, and easy to read and freely available. It looks regular, straightforward, and simple.

We might want to choose a different font to have more impact. We might want it to look more flamboyant, or academic, or quirky, or cartoony, or edgy and the list could go on.

There are many freely available fonts that have a variety of qualities. The good ones are used a lot and are unlikely to give us an edge of uniqueness or difference. Watch out for the lesser known free fonts, as they can be cheaply produced and not well drawn or have reduced characters available.

Some big brands commission a font to be drawn for their exclusive use; a luxurious situation to be in.

The next best thing is to choose a beautifully designed, paid-for font for your brand. These fonts can give stunning results; individuality; bags of personality and stand out uniqueness. Designers use them to create unique logo designs, stand out marketing campaigns and beautiful printed materials.

There are practicalities to watch out for when this route is taken.

2 – What to consider when choosing a font – what to watch out for

There are a couple things to watch out for when choosing fonts for your brand style.

When will the font be used

Your designer or design department might be creating your logo and all your marketing materials. As long as they have a license to use the font, they can export files in a format that means no-one else needs the license. If you use a different designer, they will also need the license to use the font which could incur an additional cost. It is good to be aware of the license cost so you can manage costs when outsourcing design work.

How many people will need a license

If members of your team need to use the font, they will each need a license to use it. This will influence where you get your fonts from and will depend on the budget available.

3 – Choosing fonts – Where you can get fonts from

You need a license to use a font.

Paid-for fonts

You can buy directly from the designer, from a foundry (a collection of designers) such as Linotype or P22, or a reseller like fonts.com, myfonts or fontshop.

Benefits: High quality, unlimited choice, less mainstream options

Risks: Costs can be high. Not all designers will have the font – additional licenses may need to be purchased

Fonts that come with software

In some cases you get a free license. Microsoft software covers the license for the fonts that come with its software. With Adobe membership, you get access to over 20,000 fonts as part of the package. If you have a free Canva account you get 1700 fonts to use with the apps design software. A Canva Pro account will give you 3,000 fonts to choose from.

Benefits: Microsoft fonts are widely available; your PowerPoint presentation can be shared without needing to embed fonts if you use Microsoft fonts. Designers will have access to adobe fonts so if these are used for you brand fonts, you can outsource to different designers without needing to buy any additional font licenses

Risks: Less choice. Microsoft fonts are widely used therefore less distinctive. Canva font licenses are for use in Canva software. If you want to use the font in Microsoft, it may require an additional license.

Open source fonts

Google fonts offer a large library of fonts which are are open source and available to anyone, they take care of the licensing.

Benefits: Good choice, open access for all for both web and print use.

Risks: To use a google font it needs to be installed on the local machine of the person using it. This may cause a bottleneck in getting tasks done quickly. Font clashes can occur if duplicate fonts from different sources are installed. Good font management is required.

Free fonts

You can download various free fonts from places like dafont and fontsquirrel. You will need to check the license agreement for each font on these sites as many are free for personal use only and you still require a license for commercial use.

Benefits: No cost. Freely available for all to download.

Risks: You can get caught out with licensing. Some licenses are for personal use only and commercial licenses incur extra costs. Some free fonts are poor quality and may not render very well or have missing characters such as Dollar or Euro symbols.

Summary – suggestions

The positives:

• Specialist paid-for fonts can give your brand style the edge that sets you apart from competition
• Microsoft fonts will reliably be available for anyone using Microsoft programs.
• Adobe fonts has over 20,000 fonts to choose from. If your designer uses an adobe font as your brand font, you can switch designers and as long as they use Adobe software, they will have access to your brand font.
• Google fonts offer a choice of just over 1500 fonts, available to all
• Canva Free, gives you a choice of 1700 fonts, Canva Pro gives a choice of 3,000 fonts

The negatives:

• Paid-for fonts can have high costs, if you change design suppliers you will need to supply your brand font to them, which may incur additional costs
• If you install a font on your system and use that in PowerPoint for example, and share that file with someone else, they will need to install the font to use the file.
• Free fonts may be poor quality or miss key character such as the dollar or Euro symbols

Suggestions:

Know where your brand fonts are from – ask your designer before committing to a brand font so you are able to manage usage control.

Choose a distinctive font for your logo and marketing materials. Select a complimentary Microsoft font for use in Word and PowerPoint to avoid any font issues with internal teams.