To the untrained eye, Facebook's new mobile-friendly typeface (as well as its more gender-neutral icon) bears little significance. But to creatives and designers, typography has never played a more crucial role in the communication of a brand as it does today.
Here's why typography so important:
The peripheral type:
It may be the image that grabs you initially. But, remember, people are both consciously and subconsciously influenced by the way in which your business uses type, so it must encompass everything about who the business is. It’s the subtle reasoning behind a font choice that plays a big part. A typeface can create emotion (happy or sad?), enhance a theme (past or present?), spark interest (shout or whisper?), add personality (silly or serious?) and even convey trust – all of which is crucial to the launch of a successful project. Getting it right is the difference between having an audience engage with your message, or completely miss what’s being said.
It’s okay that people don't see how good it is
The ironic thing is, good typography should go unnoticed. Not seeing typography means it makes sense within its creative surroundings. Consumers today are exposed to so much exceptional creative work that they have become desensitised to good typography (which is a good thing!).
Good typography holds their hand; it guides them along, tells them what’s important, helps them organise information, focuses them on the key points, tells a little more of the story. Bad typography screams at you. And it will be defunct from achieving any of the above.
There’s always a point
As with clothing fashions, typography styles constantly change. The choice of font used, however, should never be influenced by what's on trend or popular within the design industry. Whichever font you choose has to have creative and commercial meaning, reasoning and purpose.
Be considerate
Finally, the typographic choices we make can have a serious effect on how people perceive the brand. The way people consume media has dramatically changed with new technology, meaning more and more content is consumed via screens and responsive devices. For this alone, consideration on how typography looks and feels on every consumer platform has to be given.
Typography is just as important as communicating the brand's uniqueness through the use of colour, imagery or photography. But have fun with it, too. When choosing fonts, don't be afraid to work a typeface in a new way, just make sure it's relevant to the overall message you want to communicate.
By Chris Bennett, Creative Director of StartJG.
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