Introduction
Solid brand font selection is the glue that ties your whole organization together. Law firm font tells your brand story by bringing a voice and personality to your work. They also communicate emotions and feelings to your customers. A good font can engage and connect with your audience and communicate a certain personality. In addition, the right law firm font will help you deliver the right message consistently. When choosing the right font for your brand, consider the following factors.
Understand your Brand Personality
Define your brand personality before you choose a font. Your font will nonverbally communicate your company’s tone. In addition, customers will relate with and remember you for your brand personality. Hence, all of your brand components should align with your brand personality. These include your brand voice, color scheme, logo design and brand fonts. Hence, think about how you’d like your brand to be perceived before you determine your brand fonts.
List the Brand Fonts you Admire
Look up brands you admire and take note of their typeface branding. Notice the impression that different lettering styles can have on a viewer. Furthermore, explore how different lettering shapes or styles can evoke particular feelings. Ultimately, this information will help you make your final choice.
Understand the Personality Traits of each Font Category
Font categories are classifications that help designers choose, pair and identify fonts. Each category has its unique traits. These traits are sometimes referred to as font psychology. Moreover, each font delivers a different message and has different strengths and weaknesses. Hence, understand these categories for it will be critical for finding the right fonts for your brand personality.
5 Basic Font Classifications and Their Personality Traits
Serif Fonts
Serif fonts are classic, traditional, and trustworthy. Some perceive them as formal, practical and serious. Moreover, they can come across as corporate as well. Serif fonts are a good choice for extended paragraphs of text—like books, brochures, and fine print. That’s because they are highly legible and our eyes are accustomed to their shape. The most popular example is Times New Roman, the default font for Microsoft Word.
Sans-serif
Sans-serif fonts are modern, clean and minimalistic. They are great for general readability and work very well for the fine print. Moreover, they also have the added benefit of working well in lower resolutions. This ultimately makes them perfect for digital uses, including websites and e-readers. In addition, these fonts always bring strength and clarity to any project they are featured in. However, different weights of the same font can offer drastically different tones. For example, thick sans serifs are masculine and hardworking, while the thin line version looks glamorous and noble.
Slab serif
Slab serif fonts are bold, quirky, and confident. These fonts bring an old-school charm to a project or brand. They are usually better for logos and headers, rather than extended text. However, they are still easy on the eyes.
Script
Script fonts are elegant, intuitive, unique and they look like cursive. Much like handwriting, there are a vast array of unique script fonts available. They range from calligraphic styles to down-to-earth styles that mimic handwriting. The first ones can be found on wedding invitations, whilst the second ones are very popular amongst bloggers. Ultimately, these fonts are decorative and not suitable for long paragraphs of text. However, they provide a personal touch.
Decorative
Decorative or display fonts are stylized, distinctive and dramatic. Their forms can be specific to a genre, time period, or style. In addition, they evoke very particular feelings in a reader. However, be careful when using display fonts. For instance, they are never a good choice for secondary fonts or for body text fonts.
Be Aware of your Budget and Licensing Requirements
There are several ways to find typefaces that you like. You can scour open-source options that are free, license others for a fee or develop your own. Expectedly, there are pros and cons to each. Deciding which to use depends on your brand’s unique needs now and in the future.
Open Source (Free Typefaces)
Open source typefaces are free and easy to use. However, they are generic and can be limited. They are a popular option for startup brands because they’re easy to find and experiment with. Mostly, they are web-friendly, ensuring consistency across platforms. However, the generic look and basic styles add very little to your brand identity. Since anyone can use them, they can be found everywhere. Ultimately, this makes it harder to distinguish your brand.
Some of them are:
In addition, check out some of the most used Google Fonts on Lawyer websites.
Primary (Typefaces You Pay For)
There is a huge variety of primary typefaces. Moreover, you can find many reasonably priced options. In addition, they provide you with more creative freedom and flexibility. There are many more styles available, which may be better suited to your brand identity.
While the typefaces are generally less expensive, licensing can add up if you:
- Are working with freelancers or additional collaborators who will need their own license.
- Need to license multiple fonts within the same type family (e.g, bolds, italics, etc.).
- Are working with different platforms (e.g, you need licenses for desktop, web, mobile apps, e-pubs, etc).
Some of them are:
Custom (Typefaces You Design)
Custom typefaces are entirely unique, designed for specific applications. However, they are costly and time-consuming. You can craft a completely unique visual language, designed for your specific brand and its needs. However, building a robust typography library from scratch requires a tremendous amount of work.
Finding the right designer and getting everyone to agree on the final design is also a project itself. Still, many brands have done it. Moreover, they consider it a worthy investment both for their brand power and bottom line. For example, Microsoft created Segoe, NFL created NFL Endzone Slab, and Netflix created Netflix Sans.
If custom is for you, here are a few places to start:
Pair Your Brand Fonts to Match Your Brand Personality
How you pair the law firm fonts play a huge role, too. There’s a ton of style variation within each category that impacts the vibe of each font. Fonts are most powerful when used in opposition and support of other fonts, especially ones that provide contrast.
There are two basic ways to do this. You can use two complementary fonts from two specific categories. The other way is to mix two styles from the same family. Whichever method you choose, make sure your fonts have a proper hierarchy. Typographic hierarchy is the ordering of your fonts to best communicate specific information. Consequently, the reader should be able to understand it with ease.
Here are some law firm font pairing options for different brand personalities:
- Pair a bold serif header with a nondescript sans-serif subheader. That way you will achieve an approachable yet trustworthy feel.
- Use a single, minimal sans-serif font for a modern, professional, corporate look.
- Apply thin, stylized, sans-serif fonts for a high-end, elegant feel.
- Use a single traditional serif font for a conservative, trustworthy feel.
If you need extra help with color pairing, Canva’s Font combination generator can help you get started.
Make Sure Your Brand Fonts Meet 3 Basic Requirements
Brand fonts must be flexible
Make sure your brand fonts work well for every medium. This iincludes print, web, and mobile. Moreover, check if you have the proper licenses for each application. In addition, make sure you mockup designs for each medium. For instance, your product packaging design, your blog, external presentations and social media images. The right law firm font will provide versatility and deliver consistent brand expression across every touchpoint.
They should have multiple font weights
Multiple font weights (i.e. light, regular, semibold, and bold) are critical for building a clear text hierarchy. Hence, use different font weights to differentiate between headers, subheaders, body text, callouts, and quotes. Apply this in both print and online media. Furthermore, don’t forget to specify these steps in your brand style guide.
Brand fonts must be legible
Finally, your law firm font must be legible. Your audience should easily read and understand any text styled in your brand fonts. This includes uppercase or lowercase, large or small, numbers or letters.
Best Law Firm Fonts
Gill Sans
Gill Sans is characterized as a warm and human sans serif family font. It is considered by many to be British in tone and concept. However, it has been used in virtually every country and in nearly every application imaginable. Gill Sans has an exceptionally distinctive design with an almost limitless potential range of use.
For example, Light is open and elegant while a Regular has a more compact and muscular appearance. Its Bold styles have vivid personalities, but each of them would make an eye-catching headline. In addition, it is often paired with serif fonts like Gill’s own Joanna. Or modern offerings like Frutiger® Serif, Malabar™, Syntax® Serif, FF Scala®, or DIN Next™ Slab.
Sentinel
Sentinel is a slab serif typeface that makes an excellent font for display use as well as body copy. It provides powerfully effective typographic logos, custom fonts and type solutions for all varieties of business. All Sentinel Typefaces are designed to have lasting artistic value. Moreover, they are crafted to the highest level of technical quality. This font is considered to be a fresh take on a lovely and useful historical style. It goes well with Ideal Sans, Whitney, Gotham, Knox background, Clarendon, Bodoni, Tungsten, DIN and Trade Gothic.
Helvetica
This is a sans-serif font that gives a unique look to designs and makes them more attractive and stylish. Helvetica has been one of the world’s most commonly used fonts. Both in advertising and publishing and in urban signage. This font has been liberally splashed across logos, signage, posters, and clothing. Accordingly, Helvetica is also one of the most widely used typefaces in corporate logo design.
To name just a few—BMW, Fendi, Jeep, Nestlé, Panasonic, Skype, Target, Tupperware, and more. It was the system font of choice for the first iPhone and continues to dominate the world today. It goes well with Helvetica Neue, Lucida Grande, Georgia, Crimson, Doctrine, Roboto, DIN Next, Gibson, Benton Sans and Freight Sans.
Caslon
Caslon is an Old Style serif typeface. It applies well to books or official documents that require large amounts of reading. A popular saying of typesetters is “When in doubt, use Caslon.” In larger sizes, Caslon can lend a touch of “class” as a headline or design element. Due to its classic “old world” look, it doesn’t always translate well into humorous, modern, or futuristic designs. This font was used for the Declaration of Independence and nowadays it continues to be popular on the web. It pairs with Brandon Grotesque, Effra, Myriad Pro, Rosario, GT Walsheim and NY Irvin. Also, with Adelle Sans, Museo Sans, FF Meta and Wulkan Display
Gotham
Gotham is widely made use of geometric sans-serif electronic typefaces. Gotham’s letterforms were inspired by examples of architectural signage of the mid-twentieth century. Hence, the font looks fresh and masculine and has a very geometric structure. Wherever the font is used, it received huge admiration and popularity from everyone.
Gotham provides a relatively broad style and design. It has been used in branding, editorial design, posters, and political campaigns. For example, you can use it for your website to make the content prominent. There are many alternatives to this font. For example- Proxima Nova, Avenir Font, Museo Sans, Montserrat, and a few others.
Conclusion
To conclude, choose a law firm font that conveys a cohesive identity and resonates with your loyal customer audiences. As a result, it can make your brand stand out by using your unique voice in your visual communication. In other words- brand typography is key to the message being delivered. The typefaces you choose can have a huge impact on the way your brand communicates.
By choosing fonts that reflect your brand’s values, you can attract the right kind of customers. If you need assistance with setting up your brand, check out our branding blog posts. Moreover, take a look at our branding design services and see how we can help grow your business. However, if you are ready to take the next step, schedule a free consultation and get to know us.