Fonts: How a Designer Should Choose the Right Typeface

Choosing a typeface is one of the simplest decisions to describe and one of the hardest to get right. A font for numbers can make a product feel expensive or cheap, friendly or distant, serious or playful—all before the user reads a single line of copy. That’s why picking fonts is less about “what looks cool” and more about “what matches the job and the brand voice.”

A good type choice works across many situations: websites, apps, pitch decks, packaging, and social posts. It stays readable, scales well, and doesn’t fall apart under real content. Below is a practical playbook to help you choose typefaces that are not just beautiful, but appropriate, functional, and sustainable.

Basic Theory

Serif vs Sans Serif

Serif typefaces are associated with print, books, and tradition. They feel classic, often more serious and “grown-up,” and they work beautifully in long-form reading, editorial projects, and premium branding. Their small finishing strokes create a particular rhythm on the page that many people subconsciously associate with credibility and depth.

Sans serif typefaces are cleaner, more contemporary, and usually easier to handle in interfaces. They scale better across screens, different DPIs, and messy layouts. That’s why most modern product websites and apps are built on a sans serif foundation: it’s easier to keep UI tidy, consistent, and legible.

When a Custom Font Is Necessary

A custom font makes sense when the brand wants to sound unmistakably like itself, even in a single word. If you can spot a brand purely from the shape of its letters in an ad—before seeing the logo—that’s usually the result of custom typography. It becomes as much an asset as the logo or color palette.

Custom type is also a tool for legal and strategic protection. A unique font can be licensed exclusively and integrated across products, packaging, signage, and campaigns, reinforcing identity everywhere. It’s not always cheap, but for brands with long horizons and strong differentiation goals, it pays off over time.

How to Pick a Font for the Job

Matching the Brand’s Tone

The first question is not “Which font do I like?” but “How does this brand talk?” An eco brand with a soft, gentle visual voice can’t suddenly start speaking in a cold, industrial techno grotesque. That mismatch creates an odd, almost subconscious dissonance for the viewer. Typography must speak in the same tone as the logo, color, and imagery.

Try describing the brand in a few adjectives—warm, rational, bold, quiet, playful, precise—and then check if the font matches those words. Rounded humanist shapes feel different from sharp geometric ones; narrow grotesques feel different from broad display faces. The more aligned the type is with the rest of the communication, the more natural the brand feels.

How Not to Mess Up Font Pairing

One of the most common mistakes is mixing three or four unrelated font families in one layout “just because they look nice separately.” The result is visual noise and a lack of hierarchy. Instead, it’s usually better to choose one solid main family and work inside its built-in styles: regular, bold, italic, condensed, extended, and so on.

A good family is designed with internal harmony: weights, widths, and italics are made to work together in a system. By using those instead of random extra fonts, you keep the layout coherent and easier to maintain. If you add a second font, it should have a clear job—like display headlines, numbers, or small accents—and not duplicate what the main family is already doing well.

Trends for 2025

Bold Statement Forms

One direction in 2025 is very expressive, almost “overdriven” headlines. These are the big, soft, rounded, slightly imperfect letterforms that look like they were modeled from clay or drawn with a marker. They don’t just deliver text; they act as graphic elements on their own. You often see them in food, fashion, culture, or event branding.

These bold forms work best in short, punchy phrases where personality matters more than neutrality. They’re great for posters, hero banners, and campaign visuals—but risky for dense interfaces or legal texts. The key is to keep them where they can shout without blocking the message.

Minimalism and Clarity

On the other side of the spectrum are calm grotesques with almost no visible mannerisms. They feel neutral, quiet, and highly functional. These fonts are designed to get out of the way and let the content speak clearly, without friction or decorative noise.

This direction is especially popular with services, SaaS platforms, and digital tools. Users spend a lot of time with these products, so readability and low visual stress matter more than style tricks. Here, typography is about not being noticed—and that’s a feature, not a bug.

Where and How to Use Different Fonts

Digital Environment

On websites and in apps, readability and behavior under different conditions come first. You have to consider contrast, responsiveness, scaling, hinting, and how the font looks on various devices. Fonts that are too decorative, thin, or quirky often break at small sizes or in dark mode. In interfaces, this usually causes more harm than good.

Functional sans serifs or clean humanist faces tend to work best for UI and long on-screen reading. They don’t fight with icons, layout grids, or data. Decoration can appear in large headings or hero blocks, but the core of the interface should feel stable and predictable.

Print, Packaging, Posters

In print, on packaging, and in posters, character often matters more than neutrality. A concert poster can live entirely on one loud display font, and a wine label can lean heavily on a sophisticated serif to convey heritage. The viewer has more time to look, and physical materials—paper, foil, emboss—add extra layers of expression.

Here, the task is to balance personality with legibility at the real viewing distance. A tiny label in a supermarket isn’t the same as a big outdoor poster. Fonts for packaging must survive glare, print imperfections, and cluttered shelves. For posters, you can push expression further, as long as the main message still lands at a glance.