Type is present in essentially all marketing communications. Other than color, perhaps no other visual element plays a more crucial role in building a consistent presence across multiple forms of media. Yet, type is something few businesses use effectively, with even large established companies continuously making arbitrary choices with type. Those choices undermine their long term ability to differentiate themselves and detract from the professionalism and credibility of the materials they create.

As is common for our industry, part of Shew Design’s branding process is building a type palette in much the same way as a color palette, usually a combination of typefaces designed to work with one another for years to come.  As designers, our tools and processes put us in an ideal world of sorts – one that makes it easy to follow our own guidelines. Not so with others, and with good reason: technology and the marketplace create so many barriers to managing type easily and effectively.

Here are some strategies we’ve used to help clients harness type to create an effective brand presence.

Documented standards that are accessible, understood, and observed

Standards can address which typefaces to use and how to use them, but standards are useless if they can’t be easily accessed, people don’t know how to follow them, or if no one is responsible for enforcing them. As a general rule, we encourage a division of labor where people who create content are different from the people who approve content.  We always make standards available online, through printed manuals, and when appropriate, as stylesheets in programs such as Microsoft Word.

The PDF format

Adobe’s PDF (Portable Document Format) can embed most fonts, allowing people to deliver documents with branded typography without requiring the viewer to purchase fonts [???]. In addition, form fields can use specific fonts and can be used to make templates for report covers, CD labels, and similar pieces that can be modified by anyone without requiring a purchase or special skills. These templates can be combined with preprinted materials to create attractive materials that are completely branded and easily changed using free software.

discounts on type purchases

If cost is the primary reason against using type consistently, savings can be built into the branding process by selecting type families that can be purchased in bulk or by buying cheaper versions of established typefaces. As with most things, you get what you pay for but there are deals to be had. For example: older versions of Freehand and Illustrator would often come with hundreds of type families free. A person who is willing to invest a little time could purchase several hundred dollars worth of type for only a few dollars.

Consistent use of default type

A two tier type strategy could use more interesting branded type solutions for marketing applications while using standard type (i.e. Times and Arial) for everyday use. The disconnect between the two materials can be softened by using assets such as logos, preprinted materials, graphical headers, style sheets, etc. to maintain consistency.

An attitude of restraint

Given the wealth of free decorative fonts and effects available, it’s possible to endlessly tinker with designs without significantly improving them. Before beginning the process of exploring type, we recommend you considering focusing more on content and less on formatting, picking simple solutions will hold up for multiple projects. Simple choices almost always work better for long term solutions.

Though our eyes can distinguish millions of different shades of colors, our color vocabulary is limited in comparison –  about thirty words in all.  As a species, those  words enter vocabulary at a snail’s pace, using  a sequence that remains much the same from culture to culture.

All languages have words for black and white. Red is always the third color to have a word associated with it, followed by green (or yellow) and then yellow (or green). Blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, and grey follow suit.

There are a few  variances to this general pattern.  One African tribe has no word for green but six for red. The ancient Greeks had no word for blue. There is no Old English word for orange.

Personally, I like the fact that red is always the first color to get a word. This reinforces a notion I have about red, white, and black being the most striking color combination there is.

Source: The Art of Looking Sideways, Alan Fletcher

Now imagine that the object you’ve picked up is a book.

The ability to read to oneself is a remarkable gift.  How strange to think that these little black and white scratches on white paper could carry  so much power.

In terms of the evolution of writing, design, and typography, the ability to read silently came about suddenly and changed everything. In the Western tradition, writing was previously designed to be read out loud as part of a religious ceremony. Books were rare and incredibly valuable. With the invention of the printing press,  books became much more common and inexpensive, and could be privately consumed at a tremendously faster pace.

The human eye entered into these ancient conversations with a hurricane-like force, transforming them profoundly and permanently.  Older letterforms were strongly vertical, resembling spires and steeples. They slowed the eye with their lack of contrast between letterforms and repeated verticals.  These forms were suitable for reading out loud, but were a great hindrance to those reading  silently.

The Roman forms that replaced them had  much more contrast between the different letters.  The eye could build these forms into distinct shapes without having to decipher each letter.  The vertical emphasis was replaced with a slant roughly corresponding to a right handed person holding a pen.

Almost overnight, a visual language based on the structures of authority became replaced with a visual language based on the needs of the audience and the physical  interaction between a human body and a piece of paper. This was the birth of humanist letterforms, which are still most easily read fonts in use today.

Gothics to Romans

In many ways, the progression continues today as our communications continue to cater to their audience.  Communicators who understand and act on audience preferences will have a distinct advantage over those who don’t.

Emperor Penguins

Who doesn’t like penguins? I’ve always loved them, but I hadn’t learned until very recently about how they’re camouflaged.

When swimming, their predominantly white bellies help them blend in with a reflective water surface when seen from from below by predators such as orca whales or leopard seals. When seen from above, their dark backs naturally blend with the darker water below.

I’m struck by the cleverness of this ruse, a little object lesson in thinking contextually, and how even the most high contrast combination can help something stay hidden under the right circumstances.