When you choose signage to represent your business one of the aspects that will make the strongest first impression on your customers is your choice of which font to use. It may seem like a minor matter but it will speak volumes about your brand and what it stands for.
The wrong font choice can put potential customers off even before they’ve engaged with the brand message you want to communicate to them.
But the right font is a powerful tool for attracting attention, conveying your company’s personality and engaging your target audience from the very start.
So getting the choice of font right is absolutely crucial. But how should you choose? What are the key considerations to bear in mind?
Before you start considering which particular fonts to use, make sure you’ve considered what you need them to achieve for your business.
Here is a handy run through of the most important matters you need to be thinking about before you select a font for your signs:
Legibility:
The legibility of your sign means how easily individual letters and numbers can be made out by your customers. Bear in mind what may be legible close up may be less so far away, so do check how your sign works from different distances. Think about where your customers will be standing in relation to your sign the first time they see it: is everything totally clear from there?
Readability:
You might think this is the same as legibility and there is a large overlap between the two. But the readability of your sign is how well the letters and numbers work together to clearly convey the information on it.
Think about a sign which uses only upper case to communicate a wealth of information. It might be very legible, but it is unlikely to be as easily readable as a mixture of upper and lower case!
Consistency:
Your signage is a great way to present a consistent brand identity and your font choice, along with things like your chosen colour palette, is crucial to this.
You will probably want to use your ‘house’ font across all your signage to present a coherent and professional image to your customers. Swapping between different fonts on different signs will create the impression that your business is confused – and no one wants to buy into confusion!
Scalability:
This follows on from the need for consistency. As the signs you’re displaying may vary dramatically in size you’ll want to ensure that the font you choose is optimally legible and readable from the largest and smallest of them.
There’s no point choosing a font which looks great on the large sign about your entrance but just doesn’t work for your smaller-scale internal signage too!
Tone:
Fonts influence how people receive and understand a written message. Your choice of font for your signage will immediately position you in relation to your audience’s expectations.
If you are commissioning signage for a hospital, clearly conveying information in a serious and respectful tone is vital. But what about signage for a children’s hospital? Would something softer and more welcoming be more appropriate? The decisions you make may well have some degree of emotional impact on the viewer.
Brand messaging:
And what about the particular brand message you want to convey? Your choice of font will be one factor determining how your customers perceive your brand values and your products.
Is your brand positioned in the luxury market? Are you quirky and unconventional? Choosing the wrong font risks undermining the impact of your marketing campaigns. It is likely to spread confusion amongst your customer base about how you want them to process the experience of your product.
The Human dimension:
What does your signage look like to the people who are working in your business?
The font you choose will affect how the information and directions conveyed by your signage are heard by your employees and clients. It forms part of your corporate voice.
How are you coming across when you’re talking to your workers and client visitors? Do you want to be speaking to them in a very formal or more relaxed manner?
Complementarity:
Sometimes you’ll have more than one font used on your signage. There are pros and cons to mixing fonts and it’s something you’ll want to think carefully about.
For instance, one advantage of using two or three fonts is that they can add visual interest or create a sense of hierarchy of information to guide the viewer.
If you are incorporating your logo on a sign the chances are that it may contain a different font from the one you want to use for your signage. The key consideration then is to make sure the two fonts work together to produce a clear and harmonious whole that takes into account all of the other factors we’ve discussed.
If you know you are going to include your logo on some of your signage make sure to select a font that is going to complement it but also works optimally on signs where the logo itself might not be present.
So font choice is a crucial but easily overlooked consideration when you commission new signage.
Get it wrong and you risk leaving your customers confused about your brand identity and values, unable to retrieve or process vital information, or even doubting your professionalism.
But get it right and you have a powerful tool for communicating who you are to potential customers from the moment they first spot your business!
If you’re ready to start selecting a font for your signage get in touch.