What is typography and why is it important for your brand?

“The power of words” is an old saying which is well known to us. We all are aware of the fact that it is very important which words we use, yet we do not pay the needed attention to them. Designers, artists, typographers and printers have always endeavored, but nowadays more than ever that the texts appearance and its content are in harmony with each other.

Every day we are surrounded by written words, they appear in different types of media by what we are automatically surrounded by typography which is never chosen by chance. Which typography we chose affects the readers perception of the written words, the meaning of the written text, as well as it affects its readability and its functionality. Because typography influences on how your brand is presented or it serves for you to send your companies message it is necessary that the chosen words fit your company’s vision. These facts make the choice of the right typography as important as your companies branding. In order to determine why typography is important and how to choose the right one, we first need to define what typography is.

What is typography?

The term typography is used for composing and creating letters and text, which makes texts readable and functional, and at the same time visually adapted to the purpose it has. Typography consists of a style of letters, i.e. fonts, which defines the appearance of individual characters of a letter. This means that the shape and size of all letters, punctuation marks, diacritical marks and all other specific characters that a letter has are defined within one font. In addition, typography deals with the spaces between individual letters and words, as well as the width and height of all characters.

Modern technology has made it very easy to create fonts, so thanks to that today we have a large number of fonts of different styles and purposes. In the modern world, every company or brand has its own font that suits their needs, the characteristics of the company and the values ​​they nurture.

Styles in typography and how to choose the right one?

A large number of fonts made many different styles in the creation of typography, so today the study of typography is very complex and widespread, but we do understand that there are five basic divisions: serif, san serif (fonts without serifs), script, display and monospace.

The small ornaments you sometimes see at the ends of letters are called serifs, so the fonts that contain these ornaments are serif fonts. On the other hand, fonts that do not contain these plugins are serif-free fonts (dream serif fonts).

These two styles are very common and their use is widely represented, they can mostly be used successfully for titles or printing entire pages of text, as well as for creating elements of visual identity such as logos. So, if you are choosing a font to use for your business documents, company statute or correspondence with colleagues choosing a dream serif or serif font will be the right choice.

Script fonts could be most simply explained as handwriting mimics, created to be associated with calligraphy or handwritten texts. You can use these fonts to print titles or possibly to create logos, but never for large amounts of text. Script fonts very often sacrifice functionality because of their appearance, so you should be careful when using them.

Monospace fonts have equal spaces between all letters and characters, so they give the impression of a mechanical font, precisely created.

Display fonts are mostly intended for writing titles which can be useful for promotional purposes, posters, flyers or billboards, but not for a font used to write texts.

When you choose a font, it is desirable that you do not use more than two different ones, that the selected fonts match each other in style, and that they be part of the complete visual identity. If you understand now how important typography really is, do not hesitate to contact AMR Global Advisors so that our professionals can help you choose the right typography for your brand.

AMR Global Advisors

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