Section Title

Brand Standards

Style Guide: Typography

Fonts: the art of words

Typography is a powerful tool. When used effectively, the right font commands attention, elicits emotions, and above all, creates a voice. It’s why typography is such an essential component of our brand’s visual identity.

 

Recommended fonts

  • Concorde

  • Garamond

  • Minion

  • Weiss

  • Electra

  • Dispatch

  • Caecilia

  • Avenir

  • Benton Sans

  • DIN

  • Meta

  • Georgia

  • Times New Roman

     

  • Arial

  • Lucida Grande

  • Verdana

  • Tahoma

 

How to choose a typeface

Legibility

Legibility refers to the design of the typeface — the width of the strokes, whether or not it has serifs, the presence of novel type design elements, etc. It is easy to tell one letterform from another in a legible typeface.

  • Choose typefaces with conventional letterforms
  • Choose typefaces with generous spacing
  • Choose typefaces with a tall x-height

Readability

How your typeface is set, combined with the basic legibility of the typeface, yields a certain level of readability. In most cases, communication comes before style — form follows function — so resolve readability first.

  • Choose typefaces that were designed for your purpose
  • Align text to “right ragged” for comfortable word spacing online to avoid “rivers”
  • Make sure the leading (the amount of space between lines of text) is greater than the point size of your typeface

Suitability

Consider the design intent of the typeface. If a typeface was designed for signage, it probably isn’t going to work well set as the body copy of a book. For example, Bodoni Poster may work for certain headlines, but it was not designed to be used in paragraph form.

A few technical considerations

If your design is going to include a lot of numbers or ligatures, be sure to choose a typeface that has those things. It’s best to choose a typeface that is as complete as possible. Free fonts often don’t include these critical “extras.”

Avoid trite correlations

  • Don’t use Papyrus just because your topic is “ancient” in some way (Better yet, don’t use Papyrus at all)
  • Don’t use Comic Sans just because your topic is humorous (Better yet, don’t use Comic Sans at all)
  • Don’t use Lithos just because your topic is about Greek restaurants
  • Don’t use Futura just because your topic deals with “the future”