How to choose fonts for your project! A guide ✨

After last week’s post on some of our recent favorite fonts, we heard your feedback on bringing a post on how to choose fonts. It truly is one of the hardest parts of starting a design! Here are some tips to help guide you:

1. Research ✨

One of the most important parts of the design process is research. What aesthetic do you want your design to have? Vintage? Geometric? Classy? Organic? What is it trying to convey? Who is the audience? 

For example, a bold, experimental poster for a music festival might have a very different use of type compared to an instruction manual for a shelf. You may also have to consider different fonts in designing for an older audience versus for kids. Making this type of list will help you narrow down the aesthetic of your design and get you closer to finding the right font.

Helpful tip: It is also interesting to research and note the history of certain fonts and what use they were created for. They may also have connotations that would make them look out of place when not used in the correct way.

2. Inspiration ✨

After narrowing down what mood you want your poster to convey, look at designs that might have a similar aesthetic and see what works/what does not. For example, if you type in ’70’s poster’ into Dribbble or Pinterest, what similarities do you see? Is there a certain style of type used: sans serif, serif, or a funky display font? Is there only one font used? Multiple? I like to call this ‘studying’ your inspiration and seeing if there are any noticeable patterns. 

Once you are more confident in typography, you can choose to break these patterns and make your own. I find it helpful when still learning to study other work first and see how these different elements are used in order to better understand how to apply these principles to your own designs!

3. Find Your Fonts ✨

Time for the fun part! The main font in your design is likely what you will use for your title, headline, or even in a logo if you are working on a branding project. What role will it have? Is the focus of this font going to be readability or matching a certain theme? Serif fonts are easier to read for lengthy copy. You would probably choose a serif font for the instruction manual design example from above. However, sans serif fonts might have a cleaner and more geometric look if you are going for that. Using a combination of these two is usually very common. 

It is also a good idea to consider having another font when choosing display fonts that might only have one weight available. Use the display font in headlines or titles for some spice and find a sans serif or serif font to pair with it for longer copy. Typically, avoid using more than 2-3 fonts in your designs, as the more fonts you have, the more they start to compete with each other and distract from the information you are trying to convey.

A great rule of thumb is pairing opposites together. This can include using a bold sans serif for a headline and a traditional serif for body copy. If only using one typeface, consider the weights within the typeface family. You can use a bold or black weight for the title and then a regular or book weight for the body copy for some contrast and creating a sense of hierarchy.

It is all about finding the best match for your design. It can take some time and lots of experimenting with different fonts until you feel that you found the right fit. Do not be afraid to experiment with different styles for fun, you might have a discovery that levels up your design in a new way!

Hope you learned something from this quick introduction to choosing fonts? If you are interested in digging deeper, Google Fonts recently released ‘Fonts Knowledge,’ a library of resources that can help you learn more about the world of typography. They also have great articles on type and pairing fonts together that go more in depth than this short post. Happy font-finding! :~)

--

Post created by Anna Korol. Anna is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Chicago and a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She loves creating vibrant illustrations that she hopes can positively inspire others.