The importance of extended font families within your brand story
Selecting fonts to use within your business’ visual identity can be a monumental task. Not only are the categories to choose from extensive (welcome to the age old battle of serif v sans serif), the options for each are literally endless. We’re spoiled for choice when it comes to the millions of beautiful typefaces flooding the internet, and let me tell you, when it comes to curating a selection of three to four for each branding concept I work on, it’s a time-consuming process. And while selecting just the right combination of fonts to reflect your business authentically takes much consideration, there is one fundamental consideration that should be kept in mind when making the final decision, and that is the font’s family. Or more specifically, does it have one?
But what is a font family, you might ask. A font family is a group or collection of fonts that fall under the same name and have design elements that are alike in appearance, yet vary from each other in weight or style: enter things like light, italic, semi-bold, bold. Ensuring the font you select has a swag of these in tow guarantees you the ability to really build out elements of your visual identity like your website and places of extended text use (e-books, contracts, welcome kits for example) in a professional and consistent way without having to deviate from what has been developed within your logo and brand story. Because, let’s face it, your logo might suit a semi-bold font best, but your en-masse body text should always be regular to enhance readability. And italic, well, that’s always handy to have for special occasions too. I must inject a disclaimer at this point and clarify, the rule I try to live by for this is that it applies mainly to secondary brand fonts - not always your primary logo font (although it’s never a bad thing to have up your sleeve). And here’s why: your primary font is often a predominant feature within your logo design itself, so to maintain balance and harmony within your overall designs, I recommend using this font sparingly in other places - we’re talking headlines only. But when using your primary font sparingly, this means it’s time for your secondary and complimentary fonts pick up the slack. They’re the ones who fill in the blanks and they’re the ones who need the versatility and variety of a full family behind them. You have sub-headings and captions, headers and footers, as well as paragraphs of body text (just to name a few) - one font style really isn’t going to cut it. Especially if you’re aiming for a fully formed visual identity that looks the part and is functional.
Font families are easy to identify and can often, conveniently be purchased as one whole package or individually as you like, and some of my favourite places to buy reliable fonts with extensive families are FontSpring and My Fonts - just keep an eye out for fonts that list more than one style, or variable fonts that are an all-inclusive option. Google Fonts also has a comprehensive range of extended font families - and they’re free!
Planning for and investing in an extensive family of fonts (or a regular, bold and italic option at the very least) for you visual idenity is a sure way to ensure all your bases are covered when it comes to moving forward and developing different elements and visual aspects of your brand, outside of your logo alone. Knowing you have a full suite of consistent, versatile fonts in your swag adds layers of depth to your story and a professional, thoughtful, complete look to your overall designs. Win/win, right?