Typography Brand Consistency

When you are working on graphics for any audience you always have to think about the brand that is speaking. In many ways you have to think of your brand as a person that you want people to like. For those that have watched Love is Blind, you know that one of the most polarizing, and dare I say, hated characters was Jessica. One of the biggest complaints on her character was the change of her voice, it didn’t seem genuine, she was fake and pretending to be different types of people by changing her voice. That is what your brand needs to avoid.

You don’t always have your audience actually listening to you. A lot of the time they are reading you. Your message, your quotes, your sales, your offers. They all need to come from the same voice. The same consistent, trustworthy, recognizable voice. How do you even make that happen? The best way is keeping your typefaces consistent.  The look of the most successful brands of the world has a voice that looks the same. If I mention Google, you already picture the sans-serif face they use for everything. 

That is what you want to take your brand to, to the point that people just think of your brand and they know exactly what it looks like. T“If you as a brand are consistent in everything you do you will become a trusted and reliable source for customers to return to again and again.” -SkyNews

Ok so how do you even go about picking something that has a consistent voice, but has some room to show moods? Easy, pick 2 or 3 typefaces for your brand with different fonts within each one. Meaning, you need one typeface, like Futura, for example, that has a thin font, regular font, medium font, bold font, and black font, and maybe an italic for all too.  To go along with that, you can select another typeface that is going to represent you well in combination with the first, at this point you want something with less fonts in the family, but looks distinct enough from the others. So if you have a simple sans-serif like Futura. You could use a Script, Serif, Slab-Serif, or a Display typeface to compliment your main voice.  See below as a reference.



(Source:  https://www.toptal.com/designers/typography/typeface-classification)

After you have selected your faces, you have to make sure you keep them consistent. Meaning every person on your team must use these typefaces. All of your voices need to look the same. Having a set of Brand Guidelines helps everyone on any team know what is expected and who the company is.