Branding through custom fonts — Frank derFrankie Neulichedl

Branding through custom fonts

An important part of corporate design and branding in general is the font used online and offline. That's no secret - the typeface must be readable (or not) and transport in a distilled way the character of the brand. But how unique can you be when 90% of the logos and corporate designs are made with the 8 most popular fonts (Helvetica, Univers, Futura, Thesis, Eurostile, Bank Gothic, Avenir)? Not much. So what can we do? It is therefore a good idea to search for a special font or even better to ask a type designer to make a custom font. The custom font can push your brand experience further than you could by just using a common font as they can be tailored to the profile of the company.

A nice example is the font "Serrano" a custom font made for the Bank of New Zealand made by Klim Type Foundry under the direction of DNA.

If you think that having a new font from scratch is too expensive you might also contract with the type foundry that you don't have the exclusive rights to the font to bring down the price. But in the end the benefits from having your own font is priceless;-)

PS: Thanks to Graham for inspiring me to this post - follow him immediately on Twitter