5 Ways to Improve Your Typography in Your Marketing

Typog­ra­phy is like cook­ing a beau­ti­ful and deli­cious cake. If your cake turns out ugly, peo­ple may not want to eat it. But if it turns out with mouth-water­ing pre­sen­ta­tion, you are bound to have more taste-testers! The same applies for typography.

The art of type dates back decades ago, where hand-made and machine devel­oped a type-tiff. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a fight but there has been con­sis­tent debates about the effec­tive­ness of typog­ra­phy from dig­i­tal to hand-made.

5 Ways to improve your typography in your marketing

Arrang­ing type is an art form. It orig­i­nat­ed from hand-made man­u­scripts and includes hand-set type, before com­put­ers rev­o­lu­tion­ized the process. When Johannes Guten­berg invent­ed mov­able type, mass pro­duc­tion and reduced print­ing costs became available.

Now that every­thing is dig­i­tal, have you noticed that let­ter­ing and hand-made type are mak­ing a come­back? Humans by nature, are visu­al crea­tures and have a need to feel con­nec­tions to what they pur­chase. With lit­er­al­ly thou­sands of font options avail­able on apps, pro­grams, etc., it can be hard to know which ones are the most effective.

Do you can have a great vision and a sol­id mar­ket­ing plan for your busi­ness, but when it comes to typog­ra­phy or even com­bin­ing fonts you feel con­fused and frus­trat­ed? Well, we are here to help! This arti­cle will guide you on 5 ways you can improve your typog­ra­phy in marketing.

1. Fontmares happen.

It is impor­tant to con­sid­er how your fonts inter­act with one anoth­er when you com­bine them. If you don’t have the pro­grams that allow you to edit the height between each line (lead­ing) you can end up with font­mares like the one below to the right. Zapfi­no is a font that has real­ly long ascen­ders and descen­ders that will over­lap when used on var­i­ous lines of text.

Can you tell how easy it is to read the text on the left vs. the one on the right?

2. Choose a font with a consistent x‑height.

The x‑height of a type­face is the height of the low­er­case let­ters, not includ­ing ascen­ders and descen­ders. When the x‑height is con­sis­tent it allows your eye to trav­el eas­i­ly from let­ter to let­ter. Long para­graphs of text can become daunt­ing when the x‑height is incon­sis­tent. More impor­tant­ly, incon­sis­tent x‑heights affect visu­al impact and read­ing efficiency.

While cer­tain type choic­es may make sense for your mar­ket, let’s say children’s edu­ca­tion, it is wise to lim­it the use of it on long para­graphs. Our exam­ple below uses the same copy on the left and right. The let­ters weren’t that clear and enlarg­ing them for vis­i­bil­i­ty means you lose copy space — some­thing that is very impor­tant to adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing. Did you also notice how much longer it took you to read the text on the right?

3. Avoid punctuation mark abuse.

In mar­ket­ing, it is easy to only focus on the con­tent and for­get about how it’s rep­re­sent­ed in visu­al form.

One of the worse typog­ra­phy errors we con­sis­tent­ly see, is the mis­use of quo­ta­tion marks. For exam­ple, quo­ta­tion marks can’t be used when refer­ring to someone’s height (see below). Instead, you should use prime marks (or dumb quotes). Know­ing when to use quo­ta­tion marks vs. prime marks, will set your mar­ket­ing con­tent apart. Details real­ly do matter!

4. Logos, logos, logos.

We under­stand that small busi­ness­es can have bud­get lim­i­ta­tions, espe­cial­ly in their found­ing year. Decid­ing to devel­op your own logo or to work with almost free design­ers can be detri­men­tal to your brand. Should you try either of these, we want to equip you with the knowl­edge that will help you devel­op stronger results.

Leg­i­bil­i­ty is incred­i­bly impor­tant for logos. Remem­ber to keep in mind how small you are plan­ning to place your logo. The small­er you need it, the more sim­pli­fied it may need to become.

Using the wrong font, will cre­ate cost­ly issues. Take a look at our exam­ple on the bot­tom right. If you were to see that on a sign, would you be able to read it as you walked by a busy mall or event? Isn’t the exam­ple to the left A LOT eas­i­er to read? An unim­pres­sive logo can result in lost leads, sales or even loy­al customers.

5. Use some scale for contrast.

Using dif­fer­ent type sizes allows you to cre­ate dynam­ic con­tent, con­trast and hier­ar­chy. You don’t always need to use 20 dif­fer­ent fonts in your mar­ket­ing con­tent. Actu­al­ly, you should NEVER use 20. We rec­om­mend fol­low­ing a rule of thumb and using no more than three. Oth­er­wise the soup of fonts will also con­fuse your readers.

You can cer­tain­ly cre­ate beau­ti­ful con­trast by scal­ing type, and using one or two fonts, like our exam­ple below (on the right). On the exam­ple to the left, the type feels bor­ing, bulky and doesn’t empha­size the inten­tion of the text. As mar­keters, you spend a lot of time devel­op­ing con­tent that res­onates with your tar­get mar­ket. Make sure you max­i­mize your efforts and use the type scale trick to cre­ate empha­sis for spe­cif­ic words.

Our tips are meant to help you make bet­ter choic­es for any future projects you may have — from a sim­ple office memo to your brands’ visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion across the board.

I’d love to hear from you, what is your biggest frus­tra­tion when it comes to typography?