The Branding Series | Fonts

/

Welcome to the world of fonts! Having Creative Market in my toolbox throughout The Branding Series is a life savor. I'm certain they'll have the perfect font for your business. Pairing the right fonts can make your branding eligible and professional, but choosing the wrong font can make your brand seem confusing and a strain to read.

The Branding Series: Fonts

The Branding Series | Fonts by Maker-Monologues.com

Now that I've chosen my colors for my brand, by the way, I'm going with the darker green from the Color post and I added a copper metallic color I purchased from Creative Market. Therefore I have 7 colors, but I won't be using them all, I'm going to live with them for a few months and see which color I use the least then eliminate it so I'm working with 6. Check them out! 

I'm already feeling that "I want to change everything!" feeling so if you're having commitment issues, too, don't worry, we all go through this. You just gotta trust your gut that you chose the right colors.

A few things to consider when choosing your fonts:

  • Make sure they pair well with each other

  • They need to be eligible, no crazy swirly, hard to read fonts (you'll see what I mean later)

  • You want to be able to still read it when shrunk down to an 8pt size (like on a business card)

  • Your brand "should" have no more than 2 fonts, your main font which would be used for your logo, blog titles, headers, etc, and a secondary font that you would use for most of your copy, long paragraphs, etc. Everyone has a different opinion on how many fonts your brand should have but in my own opinion, I feel 2 is sufficient. You can get away with 3, though.

When I started Maker Monologues I had already chosen my fonts so I won't be changing that but I'll take you through how I went about deciding which 2 to go with.

I knew I wanted a script as my main font so I tried out a few free fonts like Brusher and Satisfy that Canva offers, but I knew I didn't want to use a font that's over-used. So I went to Creative Market and found the Spelling Night font and fell in LOVE! So I purchased it!

This font pack came with 2 Spelling Night fonts, one plain and one with swirls. I tried out the swirly font and it was just too much and very hard to read.

But I liked that little end swirl on the first M. I knew I could incorporate that into one of my alternative logos. Here's what I came up with. (More talk on logos in a later post.)

I took that swirl, copied it and rotated the second one, and attached them to the ends of the "MM" in the alternative logo. This is something you may want to think about when looking at different fonts and how you can make them unique and all your own!

For my secondary font, I wanted a san serif font that's very modern. I love thin, skinny lines. For my jewelry business, I went with Quicksand, which I love! But I wanted something different for MM. I also wanted to make sure Squarespace (my website service provider) had this font as an option, that's very important when looking for your secondary font.

The closest font I could find was Raleway and Raleway Thin. Squarespace carried Raleway Thin but after testing this font and reading one of my blog posts with it I could hardly see it! (And I've noticed quite a few websites that use this font as their main website font and it's SO hard to see!) See for yourself!

It's a super pretty font but just too light to read comfortably. But Squarespace didn't have the regular Raleway font so I opted for the closest font I could find that looked like it. So what you're reading now is FF Basic Gothic Web Pro but I'm still going to keep Raleway as my font in everything else. I only use Raleway Thin as my header text because you can see it better.

I paired my two fonts together, playing with different text and I loved how well they went together so my decision was made! Raleway and Spelling Night!

My brand style guide is slowly building up! I'm really loving how it's coming together. I also decided to go with the darker green (from my two options from the last post). Remember, though, after I play with these colors for a few months I'm going to end up taking away 1, maybe 2, that I just don't find myself using.

Maker Monologues brand logo, colors, and fonts.

That's the beauty of this creative endeavor, sure there are "rules" people set but ultimately it's up to you! If you want to use 10 colors, go for it! If you want to use 5 fonts, go for it! The thing is, though, you HAVE to be consistent. People need to recognize immediately when they see your font "oh, that's XYZ brand!"

At the end of this series we will be creating our brand style guide so don't worry about making one right now, unless you want to with what you've decided on so far. The next post in this series will be about choosing our icons. Things that show up everywhere in our brand, it could be cats, it could be tacos, polka-dots, etc. We'll also be choosing our social media icons that we can display on business cards and in emails.

Let's see those fonts makers! Comment below which fonts you love or which you'll be choosing. Use the hashtag #MMBranding on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter! Don't forget to tag me @makermonologues on all my social media!