Fonts have Personality :)

I bet you didn't think that fonts in Word have a personality!

In this blog we touch on fonts. It is such a huge subject that people have made a career out of it. Fouts and font families have their own personalities. That may sound like a strange comment but each typeface / font has distinct characteristics that give it a personality. So, it is very important to understand who you are designing for so that you can choose the appropriate font to suit the client.

If you are designing for an accountant you wouldn’t use Bradley Hand (below) but you might use Palatino Linotype. Why? Because the later shows a more professional serious look and feel.

One of the most important aspects about fonts in word documents is the fact that you must use Microsoft’s suite of fonts because if you don’t the fonts are subject to being substituted for a different font. The only other way of using custom fonts is to ensure that every computer that the document is used on has the exact fonts loaded into the system. This will ensue that there is no substitution issues.

Fonts come in two basic variations. Serif fonts and san serif fonts. Serif fonts are those that have the little flicks on the tops and bottoms of the font. See below:

These fonts are good for readability. They also tend to add a feeling of longevity to your document. So Serif fonts are good for lawyers, Accountants, banks etc. Serif fonts are starting to become popular again.

San Serif fonts are food for more general typography. They generally have a more modern feel as San Serif fonts have been in vogue for the last decade.

If you are starting to have trouble picking a font you can go to the default, Arial, and you can rarely go wrong!

A lot of organisations have style guides which make it very easy to choose a font as they will specify the correct font for the brand or organisation.