Fonts: The Good and the Bad
Typography is so much more than choosing attention-grabbing fonts.
It has the potential to supercharge your marketing campaign or sink it to something unremarkable.
Good typography enhances your message visually and helps your brand deliver a better user experience. It gives them a clearer understanding of your message.
Bad typography doesn’t allow customers to connect with your brand, whilst bland typography renders your message uninteresting.
So choose your font well and make sure you use it to its full potential.
Here are 3 fonts that are versatile and modern, and 3 fonts that should float away into the abyss of fontlandia and never be used again.
Let’s start with these underrated but definitely exciting fonts.
The Good
1. Chap
Chap has a premium feel that deftly references different periods of typography in one unique and exciting font. It has a timeless yet functional aesthetic with letters that are readable in all sizes and lengths. It creates unexpectedly sharp contrasts and rationalised shapes as its weights change.
You can use it in a variety of contemporary, text heavy campaigns. It’s also versatile enough to support other typefaces.
2. Canela
Canela is sophisticated yet simple. It’s not too fancy but far from being boring.
It started as a serif font but eventually went in a more modern direction, shedding its long strokes and leaving only faint flares at the ends. So now it’s in a unique spot between sans and serif fonts.
It works best as a header paired with any sans serif font for the body texts. It’s got some much potential it’s been used for both print and digital products, from art magazines to music album covers to websites.
3. Neue Haas Unica
Another simple yet modern and versatile font. Also a very underrated font that works best either as a header or as a body copy.
It has a lot of font weights, from ultra light to extrablack, with matching italic styles. So you can have fun with text designs.
It’s described as a sharper version of the more famous Helvetica, but with slightly looser spacing and a touch narrower letters.
Now that we’ve looked at fonts that should be used more, let’s discuss fonts that deserve to be hidden in the vault where Comic Sans, Papyrus and Times New Roman inhabit.
The Bad
1. Impact
Unless you’re creating a meme, avoid using Impact.
Don’t get me wrong, it does make a striking impact when it comes to visibility. But it’s such a thick font you can hardly read the words when the text is scaled to small screens. Since many people use mobiles to view sites and ads, you don’t want a font that will give your readers eye strain.
Impact is also so overused that it’s now identified with office handouts, amateur mailing list items and the aforementioned memes. Your marketing campaign can do better.
2. Calibri
Calibri is a universal font that’s a practical choice for office documents but not for marketing.
If fonts were a colour, Calibri would be beige. It’s easy on the eyes but also forgettable and not very exciting. Do you want your campaign to have those attributes? Feels like you’re saying you couldn’t choose so you chose the default font.
If I nitpick, Calibri’s width is not that UX-friendly because its standard width looks squeezed and awkward to read.
3. Brush Script
I’m not a fan of vintage looking script fonts that look like they will be used for old scriptures. And that’s just what the Brush Script reminds me of. No surprise there since it was designed in 1942.
This font is annoying since the letters don’t flow well so the final product comes off as kitschy and inauthentic.
If you need a cursive font for your campaign, there are better options. If you want to convey a distinct personality with your campaigns, there are other serif fonts out there.
