Picking a font for your business is not just about finding something you like the look of. The typeface you choose tells people something about you before they have read a single word. Is this business formal or friendly? Established or new? Worth taking seriously?
Most small business owners in North Yorkshire pick a font because it looks nice on their logo. That is a fair starting point. But it helps to know a few basics before you decide, so you are not making changes six months down the line.
Serif and sans serif: what is the difference?
Serif fonts have small lines or tails at the ends of each letter stroke. Think of the kind of type you see in a broadsheet newspaper or a law firm’s headed paper. They tend to feel traditional, established and formal. If you run a heritage brand, a solicitor’s practice or a fine dining restaurant in the Dales, a serif font can signal exactly that.
Sans serif fonts drop those tails. They look cleaner and more contemporary. Most digital brands go this way because they read well on screens at all sizes. If your business is modern, approachable or mainly online, sans serif is usually the right call.
Neither is better. They just say different things.
Your customers are probably reading on a phone
Most people will find your website on a smartphone. That changes how you think about type. A font that looks elegant on a big desktop monitor can become a blur on a four-inch screen.
A practical test: look at the capital letter I, the lowercase letter l, and the number 1 in the font you are considering. Can you tell them apart? If not, move on. That kind of confusion might seem minor, but it slows people down and makes your site feel harder to use than it should be.
Thin, decorative or highly stylised fonts tend to struggle most on mobile. Clear, well-spaced type reads better and keeps people on the page longer.
Watch out for font licensing
This one catches people out. Not every font you find on Google Fonts or a free download site is free to use for business purposes. Some fonts are free for personal use but need a paid licence the moment you put them on a commercial website. If you are using a font you downloaded without checking the terms, there is a chance you are using it without the right licence.
It is worth spending ten minutes checking before you build a website around a font. There are excellent free options that are fully licensed for commercial use. Google Fonts, for example, are all open source and free to use. Many paid fonts also come with both a desktop licence (for print work) and a web licence, and you need both if you want to use the same font across everything.
When I work on a website project, I flag this up early. It is a lot easier to sort at the start than to unpick later.
A few practical things to check before you commit
- Stick to two typefaces at most. One for headings, one for body text. More than that and it starts to look busy.
- Check the contrast between your font colour and the background. Light grey text on a white background might look tasteful to you, but it can be very hard to read for a lot of people.
- Look at how the font reads at small sizes on a phone screen, not just on your desktop.
- Choose a font family that includes different weights, regular, bold, and ideally light, so you have options without bringing in a second font.
Typography is one of those things that people notice more when it is wrong than when it is right. Get it right and it just feels professional. Get it wrong and it can undermine everything else on the page.
