Choosing two typefaces you will not regret in three years
Type is the cheapest way to look established, and the easiest place to make a decision you cannot undo. Six rules we use on every brand project.
A small business rarely has a budget for custom type, and does not need one. What it needs is two typefaces that work together, cover every situation the business will run into, and still look right when the shop opens a second location.
Rule one: pick for the worst case, not the best
Everyone chooses type by looking at a beautiful headline. Then the real work arrives: a price list with fourteen rows, a form, a phone number on a van, an invoice. Test your candidates on the ugliest thing your business produces. A face that survives an invoice will survive a poster.
Rule two: check the weights before you fall in love
You need at least a regular, a medium and a bold in the body face, and preferably an italic. A gorgeous display face with one weight will force you to fake emphasis, and faked bold looks exactly like what it is.
Rule three: contrast the pair on structure, not on mood
The reliable pairing is not serif plus sans. It is two faces with genuinely different skeletons: a narrow, high-contrast display face against a wide, even-weighted text face, for instance. Two faces that are merely different in mood but similar in proportion read as a mistake rather than a decision.
Rule four: numerals matter more than you think
If your business quotes prices, shows opening hours, or lists phone numbers, you are setting numerals constantly. Check that the face has tabular figures so that columns of prices line up. This one detail separates a professional-looking price list from a wobbly one.
Rule five: licence for where you will actually use it
Desktop, web, and, if you print, a licence that covers the printer. Font licensing is dull and it is also the single most common way a small business ends up unable to use its own brand on a job. Buy the licence once, keep the receipt in the same folder as the logo files.
Rule six: two is the limit
Three typefaces is a system nobody can follow. If you feel you need a third, what you actually need is another weight or another size on one of the two you have. Constraint is what makes a small brand look coherent, and coherence is what makes it look larger.
Priya Raman
Design Director
Priya leads website and brand design at Arri. She came from a print and packaging background, which is why Arri identity systems ship with a signage spec and not just a logo file.
