Choosing colours and fonts that fit your brand

How to choose colours and fonts that fit your brand

Choosing the right colours and fonts for your brand is about more than just going for something that looks kind of nice and appeals to you personally. And while this might seem like a fairly obvious statement to make, this is often a powerful driver behind why organisations and businesses opt for a particular font or colour. When it comes to what we like and what we don’t like, it can often be hard to get past our preferences and bias when considering the best direction to go in. It is important, however, to take ourselves out of the equation and to try to be as objective as possible when it comes to our brand design

Ask the right questions

Before you start any brand project, you should begin by asking some probing questions about what your brand represents and what direction you want to take it in. When considering fonts and colours that fit your brand, you should try to answer the following questions;


Who do you want to appeal to?

What kind of impression do you want to make?

Where does your brand fit in the market?

What makes your brand different or unique?

What makes your brand important?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can start to piece together a narrative or story behind your brand that can help you to drive branding decisions. 

Come up with some initial ideas

There have been numerous studies on the science and psychology behind how we perceive colours and fonts, and while no one person will perceive a colour or font in the same way as another, there are some definite trends worth considering colours and fonts for your brand. Is your brand exciting and innovative, warm and friendly and all about fun, or authoritative and secure? When choosing your brand colours and fonts, you should be aware of the basics behind audience perceptions and expectations. 

Blues can denote peace and serenity, but they can also represent security and authority. Banks often choose blue to reflect this. Yellow’s and Orange’s tend to be more warm and friendly, while purple is usually associated with a more luxurious product. Similarly, when considering your fonts, a bold straight typeface can reflect sturdiness and confidence, while a font that reflects more of a written word kind of style will come across as more personal, stylised and friendly. Choose a selection of options that you think best reflect the answers to your initial questions and start to draw up some initial ideas. 

Do your research

In order to put your objectivity into practice, you should conduct a thorough analysis of your brand and businesses and organisations that offer similar brands and services. When conducting this research, you should try and think of the merits and faults of your competitors and also how your brand fits into this bigger picture. How does the branding of your competitors and other brands reflect what they have to offer? Once you’ve drawn up some conclusions as to what you like and what you don’t like, you can start to piece together the best way to reflect your brand through the colours and fonts that you opt for. 

Try out a few different options

Being too narrow in your approach can result in narrowing the potential of what you have to offer. While your brand needs to be cohesive and consistent, it isn’t a static or singular entity. Your brand is always moving and changing, and you should be doing the same. Draw up a few different options and provide a rationale behind each option. Once you have a few options available, you can mix and match and getter a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t.  

At Kaizen Brand Evolution we’ve helped numerous brands to come up with colours and fonts that not only look great, and make them stand out from the crowd, but that have also been ideally suited to the brand’s core values and identity. To find out more about how we can help you with your branding you can visit our brand design page, or get in touch by via our contact page or by calling 028 9507 2007.

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