Building brand character

Sanjay Sarma, CEO of Design Worldwide, a brand advisory firm, feels that typeface and fonts are extremely critical elements in conveying a brand’s character. “Both are different,” he explains. “Typeface is the visual look of the typography that can be clustered as a homogeneous set, and font is the actual weight and size of a type within the set.”

There is a psychological and cognitive pattern in which we recognise brands. And how the word-mark is written has an imprint in our minds as a visual. “Think the wavy Coca Cola. Or the clean lines of Apple. At the recent Apple event in September, they used a comic sans kind of font in some parts of their presentation and they immediately got called out for it. It’s just not Apple’s DNA to use such a font,” says Sarma.

“A font can convey a mood and trigger emotions. And that helps build brand character and associations. Therefore it is very important for any brand to go through the drill — mind mapping, mood boards, etc, before settling on a particular typeface and a font. It’s complex, layered and not just about looking pretty. But first and foremost, it is about clarity and legibility. How easy it is to register determines how long it gets remembered.”