How many Fonts should you use in Branding?

5 years ago

This question pops up in lots of my conversations. How many fonts should I use in my branding? Is 7 fonts too many? But I just LOVE Dancing Script, it’s so pretty, do I have to get rid of it?

So today, we’ll discuss, how many fonts you should use in your Branding!

Fonts, Letterpress Type

While there are no steadfast rules for much of design, there are things that you should adhere to if you want your branding or any of your design to look professional. The problem many non-designers face is that in not knowing much about design they think that putting in #allthethings they can think of into a design is what’ll make it look good. In fact, it’s the exact opposite!

Think of the beautiful designs you’ve seen in the past. The ones you admire, the ones you pinned in your secret board. Go back and look at them, I’ll wait right here.

I’m willing to bet most of them are very simple. But I’m also willing to bet you didn’t notice they were. That’s where the magic is!

Distilling something into its essence is what makes good design.

It’s also quite difficult to accomplish. But when it’s done right, you can tell. You don’t have to be a designer to recognize good design, that’s why it’s good!

The same goes for branding and for font usage. You don’t need 5 fonts to use all over your brand, you need to stick to what works and what elevates your brand. In this video I talk about this exactly and I show you how I use 2 fonts to brand 2 of my clients. You’ll see how you can create depth in your branding without having to resort to more than 2 fonts.

If you’re not into watching videos (and this is a longer one as I show you samples and go into a lot of detail) here’s a quick summary.

There are not only many different fonts to choose from, but fonts themselves have styles to choose from. This gives you an opportunity to use less to create more!

Typically, one font will have a Regular, Bold, Italic and Italic Bold style at the very least. Others, like the one in the video, have a lot more than that, like Hairline, Ultra Light, Light, etc. These styles give you the ability to make your font styling look different without resorting to another font.

When you add different colors from your established color palette, you add another array of options that when combined with the options mentioned above, give you even more options. For example, 4 options like Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic combined with 4 colors from your color palette give you 16 options to choose from.

Now, we’ll add even more options, like changing the look of a font style by using letter spacing and uppercase styling. This will increase your options exponentially and is one of the reasons why you can even brand a business with just one font!

So if you’d like to see how these options work, have a look at the video and then let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

If you’d like to learn more about font pairing, color palettes or creating a memorable logo, check out these workbooks by clicking on the image below.