50 out of 64 of the largest Fortune 500 companies do not use serif fonts in their logos.
50 out of 64 of the largest Fortune 500 companies do not use serif fonts in their logos.
The most common problems I see in young designers is a lack of knowledge regarding type.
So here goes:
1. DELETE YOUR GRUNGE FONTS
Just get rid of them. They are over used, they don’t look good, and why drag and drop when you have the ability to overlay a texture on them, or mask texture out of them.
If you want your designs to look professional then you will stop using them. Just saying.
2. Delete your fonts that are too weird.Essentially all art and design is based upon simple shapes (circle, square and triangle) and every letter should reflect one of these simple shapes. The closer the type is to these simple shapes the easier it will be to read, and thus the more effective it will be in communicating what you are saying.
3. Choose font families
If I only have Helvetica bold, then when I am done with my title I have to choose a thinner point font for my body. Mixing fonts can be dangerous for your health and is a hazard to all who read your copy. To be safe, pick a font family which has your bold, thin, medium, italic, light, condensed already included to make sure you maintain continuity in your design.
4. Make sure your font has all the symbols you need! This should go without saying, but cheaper/free fonts will not always have your special characters leaving you no option but to use a different font for the character or to change the font mid-design.
5. Use left justified unless you have a reason to do otherwise. We as english readers read from left to right. It is easier on the eye when there is a standard place for your eye to come back to at the end of each line.
6. Watch out for “rivers.” These are lines in your text when you decide to justify your copy on both sides.
7. Watch out for orphans. These are last lines in paragraphs that have a single word hanging on the bottom.
8. (in general) Quit bulls-eyeing your title. Study the rule of thirds for titles, or if a graphic piece is your main visual, then don’t be afraid to place your text smaller and off to the side.
9. KERN! If you are using a cheap font you will have to do this much more, but even great fonts (futura is my favorite) have to be kerned. This means making sure that each space is equidistant from the next.
10. Visual size is something that great fonts take into consideration. For instance, O is normally a bit larger than the other letters in great fonts. But our eyes read them as the same size. If your font does not take visual size into consideration then chances are you are using a poor quality font, and your work will reflect that even if most people couldn’t pin-point why.
11. Rarely does mixing serifs and sans serifs work. (modern family is the only logo I can think of where it works. No I don’t watch modern family, but you are gracious enough to not disregard what has already been said even if I did… right?). Don’t mix them unless you really know how to pull it off. If anything in here has already helped you, then I suggest being safe instead of sorry.
12. Don’t mix more than 2 fonts in a composition. Again, rules are meant to be broken, but you shouldn’t break rules until you have a reason to back it up.
13. Make sure your type has breathing room! QUIT BUTTING IT UP AGAINST EACH OTHER, AND AGAINST YOUR COMPOSITION WALLS.
14. If you disregard the rule of left justification, don’t mix alignments in a single composition.
15. Avoid extremely thin type. Avoid extremely fat type.
16. When using thin type, make things tight. When using fat type give it more breathing room. Think of titles like people. If you stick a small sweater on a large guy, he looks goofy, if you stick a baggy sweater on a skinny person it looks goofy. If you stick a small purple v-neck on top of diesel’s you have me.
17. HIERARCHY HIERARCHY HIERARCHY. First of all, make sure you have it. I know your pastor or boss thinks that each letter is as important as the next in your flyer, but it isn’t. Just look at a restaurant menu and argue with me otherwise. The fact that all meals come with 2 sides and a drink is important, but not as important as the bold “Bacon Avocado Burger” or the medium text next to it that says “with your choice of grilled onions or onion rings.”
Secondly, don’t use more than three or four established hierarchies. Too many just makes things muddy.
Type is the one thing that crosses all branches of design. Just because your text looks cool in 3d with reflections and lighting, does not mean that you don’t have to kern. Just because you have a cool banner on your site that rotates images doesn’t mean that the text on the images shouldn’t be paid their due attention. Design is about communication, if you are not doing due diligence to make sure that your type looks good, then it won’t be read, which means you won’t be communicating, meaning you won’t be designing.
