How To Get Your Font Just Right During A Brand Refresh

Brand experience and design are absolutely essential to meeting consumers’ expectations.

More than 80 per cent of consumers believe that brand experience is as important as the products and services it produces. Similar studies also show that two-thirds of customers expect companies to understand their needs and failing to meet them with your typeface — the first and most enduring point of contact with a customer — could be disastrous for your brand.

As such, it’s essential for marketers and creatives to bear type in mind when refreshing a brand. But knowing where to start can seem incredibly daunting and picking the right font is certainly no small task.

Understanding Your Brand & Consumers

The first thing marketers should consider when choosing a new typeface for a brand refresh is how consumers perceive your brand. After all, they’re the people you’re selling to.

Fonts can have transformative impacts on brands. With the right font, positive consumer response can increase by 13 per cent and brands can see as much as a 9 per cent increase in trustworthiness and a 10 per cent increase in memorability.

Getting the right type can serve to support the perception you are trying to achieve for your brand in the minds of your current — and potential — consumers.

Next, you need to get a handle on where your audience might be. For example, a global brand will need to employ a type that is easily adaptable across different languages. You’ll also need to consider where your customers will be interacting with your brand. The demands on a typeface posed by a digital-only publisher are significantly different to one that operates across different digital media.

For brands operating across retail media, out-of-home, TV, social and other channels, brand consistency is an even tougher challenge.

This is why it is important to map all of your brand’s touchpoints. Do you have an app? Do you advertise across social media? How does your website function and how are you looking for consumers to convert into customers — are they buying a product or filling in a contact form, for example?

Once you have those touchpoints identified — no small matter, by the way — you can then begin your search for the right font.

A smart way to choose the right font is by using a method called “quadrant analysis.” This is a helpful tool that lets you figure out which fonts match well with different brands. It may sound complicated, but here are the three main steps:

Set Up the Quadrant: Begin with a chart with two axes. Each axis point is labelled with a keyword that represents different aspects of your brand’s style. For instance, one axis might have “traditional” at one end and “modern” at the other.
Place Font Examples: Now, take different font examples you are considering and position them within the chart. This placement helps you visualize how each font relates to your brand’s identity. For instance, a classic, elegant font might find its place closer to “traditional,” while a sleek, contemporary font could lean more towards “modern”.
Analyse the Results: By mapping out these font perceptions within the quadrant, you can see which fonts best match your brand’s positioning. This visual guide will make it easier to select a typeface that resonates perfectly with your brand’s personality and message.

Find the perfect font

The type experts at Monotype believe that “Finding the perfect type might be elusive, but finding the right type is absolutely achievable”.

If you need help finding the right type — not a surprise given the complexity and gravity of the task — Monotype’s tools can help you pick the right one and get it to appear consistently across all your touchpoints.

Monotype has worked closely with global brands like the Bauer Media Group, for example, to ensure that the typefaces used across its more than 600 magazines, 400 digital products, 50 radio and TV stations, and in-house printing and marketing services were consistent and correct for each brand. Monotype’s font library and tools made picking the right type easier and ensured font consistency was achieved across all the company’s touchpoints.

When it comes to getting typefaces right, there are few better places to start than Monotype.

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