“What do you imply by typography? What font is that? What’s a typeface?” – We repeatedly face questions from our shoppers on the distinction between fonts and sort, when to create one thing customized, and the way it applies to model improvement. Let’s clear some issues up:
- The time period “Typeface” refers back to the household of sort.
- The “Font” is the variant of the typeface inside that household.
Why is Typography essential?
Typography is greater than selecting the most recent fashionable “font.” Typography is essential in establishing a model’s general tone and really feel. Not solely will typography affect the person on how they really feel when viewing your model, however it can inform and information them as they work together with you. Typography performs a major position in how customers understand data written in textual content. Usually talking, a visually interesting sort is more practical at grabbing the person’s consideration and could have extra potential to strengthen the model than a generic typeface.
For us, step one within the design course of is to discover a strong sort research, pulling completely different typefaces that contemplate all undertaking specs (usability, licensing, Webfont availability, and aesthetics primarily based on conceptual course).
This sort research will act as a beginning/reference level for emblem design, offering the designer with a financial institution of applicable fonts to work with as they start the design course of. From there a customized typeface can be created if wanted. An important instance of the place a customized typeface was wanted to spherical out the system is our latest work with Hazelwood Labs.
In our preliminary conferences with Joseph at Hazelwood, we mentioned the precise in-application use circumstances that the model would have. One among their key contact factors was the flexibility to laser minimize letters into numerous wooden, metallic surfaces, and different supplies. In the event that they had been to make use of an odd typeface to laser minimize, items of the letters would fall out and reduce legibility. When beginning the design course of, fixing this downside was high of thoughts. In an effort to obtain the ultimate look, we would have liked to create a wholly customized typeface with a “stencil” font.
Kind is way more than “only a font.” Typography has a major position to play in a model’s improvement and visible identification. And due to that it requires a deep dive into creating issues deliberately and with usability high of thoughts.
