Font Selection is Important

To most people, fonts are just another useless choice in their Word document. To designers however, fonts are an integral element in communicating ideas and emotions.

There are thousands of fonts, thousands of beautifully created fonts, each designed with a feeling or purpose in mind - some are very versatile.

When a typeface is used in design, an association is made by the consumer on the look of the product or brand and how it makes them feel about it. Consumers when presented with a consistent looking look that is associated with a brand will come to remember it and the feelings they have of that brand will be rekindled, in some small way.

The image above contains 9 words all with different word marks. Most of these word marks have been derived from actual fonts and then modified by a graphic designer to better suit the brand and what it represents. What's cool about this, is that without even saying the brand (or band) names on this document, most people could tell you the names of all 9 brands represented here. If this does not demonstrate the importance of proper font selection and graphic design as part of brand building, I don't know what does.

A good graphic designer should take great care and spend a good amount of time in learning about your brand and what it represents in order to craft a word mark or logo. One of the first things that a designer will do is select the fonts to be used on the project (for use in logo, stationery, packaging etc.) this can take several hours to select the right fonts for each of these. But the result is an effective part of your communications strategy - putting across information is important, but good design and proper font selection can associate emotions to that information.

Graphic designers are trained to communicate ideas and information in a visual way, utilizing fonts is part of this process. The next time a designer presents you with a design or word mark for review, ask them to explain why they chose the one they did - you may be surprised what went into their descision. As a client, you should challenge the rationale behind the design to ensure the designer really understands what he/she is communicating - with a professional creative team and good creative direction, a design is rarely wrong unless the rationale and understanding of what needs to be communicated behind it is wrong.

Bottomline: A well crafted brand comes from understanding the customer then taking the time to ensure all visual elements align with what needs to be communicated.

Please note that I found the image above online with no credit, I left the file name intact so that whoever put it together can find it on my blog and request proper credit.

The Actor Within

What does graphic design and marketing have to do with acting? Not a whole lot, but there is one parallel between the two that I'd like to explain.

Whether you are sitting down to design a logo or develop a marketing plan you have to put yourself into the customers shoes. You have to think like a customer and become that customer, even for just a brief moment in time so that you can understand their motivation. Just as an actor must do to perform a role.

This takes some understanding of who the customer really is or could be. At an ad agency, design firm or a creative house like ours, you really have two customers: The client, and their customer.

Believe me when I tell you - our efforts have to be on the clients customer, not the client in order for any advertising or marketing to succeed. Unfortunately, there are times when things get changed to the point where it only satisfies the client. This makes for a happy client, but this is short lived and when the campaign hits the streets and the results come back to kick them in the ass... we get the blame.

If your designer or creative team does their job, does the research and makes an effort to truly understand who could be using your product, they will do some 'acting' and become the customer for a short period of time. In this time, they will create something truly special, something that will motivate, interest and compel this customer to be separated from their wallet long enough to purchase your product or service.

Just as there are great actors, there are great designers. A great designer can quickly understand the motivation of the end customer and create something unique and compelling.

When reading this it doesn't sound that difficult, does it? But when you take into consideration that the designer must also keep the clients' branding elements familiar and consistent, that it must stand out and be better than their competitions' ads and that it must resonate with the customer it really becomes complex.

In the creative business there are many revisions and changes, that's the nature of the beast, but when you are getting strong push back from your designer on a change to the creative, ask yourself; is the requested change for you or your customer?

The answer to that question isn't always in favour of the designer, they can be wrong... they can be bad actors, or have bad directors or just have a crappy script. The point is to illustrate how important it is to look at changes to ensure they are to better the creative to better target the customer.

Targeting the customer is always right.