Brand of Brothers

Typography in Branding

• REMIXED: the branding agency • Season 3 • Episode 8

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🎙️ Typography Talks: Fonts, Faces, and Brand Identity | Brand of Brothers

Welcome to another episode of Brand of Brothers with Doug Berger and Johnny Diggz, where we’re peeling back the layers of typography and how the right font choices can shape your brand’s voice, personality, and perception. From Helvetica to papyrus (yes, we’re going there), this episode explores the art, history, and strategy behind type.

🔥 In this episode:

• What typography actually is and how it differs from fonts
 â€˘ The history of type from Roman engravings to today’s digital families
 â€˘ Serif, sans serif, decorative, handwritten—why it’s more than just two categories
 â€˘ How fonts communicate tone and emotion (and why Comic Sans has a time and place)
 â€˘ The difference between licensed and open-source fonts, and when to use each
 â€˘ The rise of “blanding” and why luxury brands are going minimalist with type
 â€˘ Legibility, readability, and the science behind font selection for design and memes alike
 â€˘ Tips for balancing contrast, weight, kerning, and spacing in your typography
 â€˘ Case studies: when font choices go right, and when they go hilariously wrong

💡 Whether you’re a designer picking brand assets, a marketer crafting campaigns, or just someone who can’t stand Times New Roman, this episode will give you a fresh perspective on how type shapes every message.

🎧 Listen now to learn how to:

• Choose fonts that align with tone and audience expectations
 â€˘ Balance beauty with readability in branding and digital content
 â€˘ Avoid common pitfalls that make typography feel off or inaccessible
 â€˘ Use fonts strategically to differentiate your brand in a world of sameness

Presented by Remixed, the full-service branding agency that helps companies craft, launch, and grow brands that convert.

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Doug Berger:

Welcome to the latest installment of Brand of Brothers. I'm Doug.

Johnny Diggz:

And I'm Johnny. Today we're talking about typography in branding.

Doug Berger:

All right, let's get to it.

Johnny Diggz:

Typography. Typography. Typography. I call that fonts. What's the difference? Anything?

Doug Berger:

Yeah, there's a little bit of a, a different difference. So typography is really the study of, and the creation of, whereas fonts are kind of the results. Of, okay, so fonts are what you think of when you think of Helvetica True. Or you think of, uh, times New Roman and you shouldn't be thinking of times New Roman. But in case you do, uh, you're thinking of that as a font. We generally refer to it as a type face. Um. The, the difference is, is virtually nil. Okay? A font is a specific weight, whereas a typeface is a family. So Helvetica Bold is a font. Helvetica Narrow is a font, but they're all part of the Helvetica typeface family. Okay? And so typography. Is the creation of said fonts. And so these fonts were created for numerous reasons.

Johnny Diggz:

So these go back, I assume, to printing press days, right? Earliest? Absolutely. Yeah.

Doug Berger:

And, and before, right? Oh, I guess they did have handwritten fonts. They etched them. Uh, okay. Which is where you find Roman, right? That whole Roman concept is from the engravings and etchings of Roman. Type.

Johnny Diggz:

Okay. Times New Roman is a evolution of, of it. It certainly, it certainly

Doug Berger:

was one of those things. And then you also have other type faces like Trajan, which come from that kind of era. They, they are derivative.

Johnny Diggz:

Okay. So, and

Doug Berger:

every modern font today is derivative. Okay.

Johnny Diggz:

And my understanding is because I is that there are basically two. Two kind of families gr like master families. I got the, the RIF and the SANS rif.

Doug Berger:

It, it goes a little bit more vast than that. Oh, okay. So you also have your decorative fonts. You have your handwritten fonts. You have Okay. Numerous categories of fonts. Oh, so

Johnny Diggz:

it's just, it's it's beyond just RIF and rif.

Doug Berger:

Correct. Okay. And, and so it also gets a little bit convoluted as you dive into this, right. So a RIF are the little embellishments. That you find at the end of a letter. Uh, for, for example, when you look at the, the letter L, when it's a lowercase l that's Sam Serif. It is simply a vertical bar. Right. Looks like a

Johnny Diggz:

one

Doug Berger:

almost. Yeah. Or, or a a, uh, a capital I, right, right. Without the little sticks. Right? Sure. And the little sticks don't necessarily mean that those are tariffs. Rifs, um. How, how can I explain it more simply? So when you ha actually, when you have those little sticks that stick out from that vertical bar, then those are your rifs. Rifs can be slab, which is when they are, uh, vertical and horizontal lines like the shape of the letter itself or if they're tapered. And that's what you would generally identify as a typical C.

Johnny Diggz:

So you'll see those like the times New Roman that has like sort of the. Almost like wedges at the edge edges.

Doug Berger:

Sure. Wedges at the edges. Absolutely. That's what, that's what serifs are. Wedges at the edges. I like it. Um, but I don't like us continuing to talk about times New Roman, can you pick a different one? Like papyrus? Everyone loves papyrus.

Johnny Diggz:

I love the, um, there is SNL, uh, sketch with I think, uh, um, I can't think of the guy's name, but, um. Where they talk about papyrus as like the font for Yes. As the font for avatar. Avatar, right?

Doug Berger:

Yes. So, uh, and, and the funny thing is that, uh, not too long ago, there was a second SNL sketch when Avatar two came out. And the nightmare was that they continued to use papyrus, but it went from papyrus, regular to papyrus, bold. And uh, and so the whole sketch is about this nightmare of using papyrus and the, uh, the actual, uh, typographer, the guy who created. The papyrus font. Um, he was interviewed about this, and of course, he didn't know that it was being used until we knew that papyrus was being used. And of course, it was not created to be a title font for a a feature length motion picture.

Johnny Diggz:

What, okay, one last question before we move on to the implementation of these things. Um, you mentioned a typographer, that's somebody who makes fonts for, uh, fun and profit.

Doug Berger:

Uh, it, yes. Okay. I, I think the, the long and short of it is yes, a typographer, it not necessarily everyone who creates a font. Can be classified as a typographer. Um, it is definitely a skilled trade. Um, but there are people who do it as hobby, who do it for fun and uh, but there are foundries, type foundries that create fonts or commission fonts to be made.

Johnny Diggz:

Okay. Because I've seen those like websites where it's like you can get free fonts. And are those like all open source or like. Like, so they're like, seem like some of'em are copies of maybe copyrighted fonts and

Doug Berger:

Yeah, they, they're, they're definitely, like I had said. All fonts are derivative, um, in, in one, one, uh, way or another. So you do have licensed fonts, right? And you have open source fonts. So licensed fonts you might be paying for, uh, from Adobe or, uh, or typography.com, which I believe is, uh, John. What's his name? Heffer's Jonathan Heffer's, uh, company. Uh, they're the ones who created fonts like Gotham, and so Gotham is derivative of Helvetica, but Helvetica is derivative of new House grotesque, and it keeps going back further and further. And so when we're talking about. Licensed fonts versus open source fonts. Then you have open source fonts, like what you can find on Google fonts, for example, where you can download those fonts for free. There are no licensing restrictions, whereas a licensed font is either licensed by a. The desk or the computer that it's on, um, or it's by the company for usage or it's by actual application. So there are some licenses that are incredibly narrow in scope, but open source is the complete opposite. You're free to use it. As you please, um, no questions asked. And, uh, so you can get some amazing, beautiful, uh, type faces out there. Uh, for example, I just mentioned Gotham. That was done by, uh, by, uh, Batman, by by, uh, Heffler and Frey Jones. Um, so Vet Duo created Gotham and then there was a subsequent font that's rather derivative. It's pretty uncanny how similar they are called Montserrat.

Speaker 3:

Mm.

Doug Berger:

And so, uh, it, it has a, a very similar appearance, similar aesthetic, except the difference here is that it's open source and free to use for anyone.

Johnny Diggz:

So when you're talking with a client and you're looking at their brand, how, how do you get, how do you choose, say, this is a good font for you. Um, like how do you get to that? Yeah, that's a great question.

Doug Berger:

So, the very beginning of the process, of course, begins with putting together the messaging brands scape that messaging brands scape helps us to identify a, a litany of points. I believe we had a show about it previously, so I'm not gonna dive too far into it. Um, but one of the key components that comes out of a messaging BrainScape is tone. Um. Different people like to have different numbers of tonal words that help to identify, uh, what the, the emotional connection is from a brand to its audiences. So those words might be accessible, those words might be luxurious. So when you have those two components, so you're not gonna have. Luxurious and accessible in the same brand.

Johnny Diggz:

That would be a really interesting brand. Yeah. Uh,

Doug Berger:

well, I mean, we have plenty of, uh, of, of contradictory things, right? Sure, sure. Like military intelligence. How does that work? Um, so anyhow, terrible old joke, but I'm here for it. Uh, jumbo

Johnny Diggz:

shrimp.

Doug Berger:

Exactly right. So when it comes to accessibility, it makes sense that you would also use an open sourced font, right? And then when it comes to luxury, it would make sense that you use a licensed font. However, what we're seeing, current trend, current trend, when I say current trend, I mean the last 2, 3, 4 years in design is what many designers refer to as Blanding. As opposed to branding. And so we're seeing a lot of companies that are, are higher end companies, right? Moving away from their decorative type faces or their, their, uh, custom crif fonts into more of a San Serif direction, and a lot of them actually toward Helvetica.

Johnny Diggz:

The, um, I guess the most recent of those that was a bit, uh, controversial was, uh, cracker Barrel. Oh

Doug Berger:

my gosh. Well, I, I guess that one just came and went, didn't it? Okay. Well, I mean, we

Johnny Diggz:

hardly knew. You knew Cracker Barrel,

Doug Berger:

and that's what, and, and that's what happens when you just design by feeling and don't leverage data. Right? They could have resolved this entire. Debacle by having engaged their audience. Right? Right. It would not have been complicated for them to have sourced a, a number of of customers to get their feedback right before they experienced such backlash, but. Again, back to typography and branding. I don't think, I don't think that what they presented, it's what needed to touch

Johnny Diggz:

on that Blanding episode that just happened. But I,

Doug Berger:

but see, I don't think that it was a mistake where they went with it. It, it almost felt like they refined the typeface that they had as opposed to through away all of the heritage that they had. The complication is that they got rid of the character. Right, right. They got rid of that mascot and they got rid of that bean shape or whatever it is, right. That they put their logo in. There were so many opportunities to have been leveraged, to have turned it into something amazing. The problem is that it was so oversimplified in presentation and that they neglected to educate their audiences, but I don't think that. It was a lesson in what not to do for visual representation. I think it's a a, a what not to do from a public perception, uh, point of view because a, anytime we reposition a brand, we wanna educate our audiences that this is coming, right? And we want them to understand why it's coming. So how do you do

Johnny Diggz:

that?

Doug Berger:

So they're, they're. I, I, there are many launch Yeah. Components. I, I think that we might wanna save for another episode. Sure, sure. Um, but just to briefly touch on it, uh, it. It, it comes in a multiple, uh, multiple set of ways, right? So first is, uh, maybe you have an email campaign that you send out to your existing customers. Um, you also put something a little teaser, uh, on your website. So maybe there's a banner that says, new look coming soon. Get a sneak preview and, and you can build up to that. Mm-hmm. Um, and then of course, uh, there's media relations. To help roll that out depending upon the size of the company, and there's direct marketing that you can do as well.

Johnny Diggz:

Yeah. It did seem like that particular one with the Cracker Barrel brand, uh, it seemed to hit everybody from out of the blue, like it seemed like people weren't expecting that.

Doug Berger:

Yeah, and and I think the same thing kind of happened with Jaguar, except Jaguar told us it was coming. Right. The issue is that the way that it was embraced. Was was terrible. Right. It, it felt very out of touch. Right. Um, and, and that's the importance when you are creating a brand, is that in specifically typography, right? Is that it needs to feel like it is corresponding to your audience expectations. So if you are selling a luxury product and you present it. In a fashion that feels like, um, you know, uh, 1990s web design, uh, where it's super busy and it is using, um, like courier, that typewriter font, right? Um, that, that lacks sophistication and edge. Your audience is gonna be confused by it, right? There's a particular set of aesthetics that go with luxury, whereas. When you're, you're dealing with things that are a little bit more accessible. It, it can be a little bit more fun, it can be a little bit more loose, it can be a little bit more irreverent.

Johnny Diggz:

It makes me think of like the, the early, the early Twitter logos and. Um, like their distinctive sort of fat rounded fonts that, that looks right. That, that felt, it almost drove an entire design change across the internet.

Doug Berger:

Right? Yeah. It, it, it had that, it, it also, um, had that three dimensional aspect to it, right? It looked like it could have been rendered in, in some sort of 3D program. Um, yeah. And it was kind of a bubble font. Mm-hmm. It was a samsara font with rounded edges. Um, kind of like. Helvetica round. Um, and, uh, it, it had stroke on it. It was a heavier weight. It felt fun. It felt accessible. It didn't feel threatening. Right. It felt available. And, and it felt like what you wanted social media to feel like.

Johnny Diggz:

Right? Right. So, um, I know that there are some, uh, sort of. Almost me comical meme, fonts. I mean, I, I say comical like, like ka copari or comic sands. Yeah. Who people joke about, uh, like it's sort of a, almost a, a, a newbie mistake making a flyer and only using comic sands or, or typing a professional email and choosing that font, right?

Doug Berger:

Yeah, for sure. And, and it's because fonts convey tone, right? Whether you are looking at a typeface and understanding. What tone it conveys or not. There's value, and even when it comes to comic sands, and this is a hot take, comic sands. Sucks, generally speaking, but it has a time and a place, right? So when it comes to education, for example, it is a fantastic typeface, not because of it, its aesthetic, although it does feel very accessible, it doesn't feel like, uh, its super authoritative. So for younger children and dyslexics, right, there is, uh, scientific data. That backs the, the usage of, um, of comic sands for people that have, uh, difficulties reading specifically, uh, with dyslexia. Interesting.

Johnny Diggz:

So, um, but it's, it still

Doug Berger:

sucks and I would never

Johnny Diggz:

use it, but, um, but I guess what you're saying is that there's a time and a place for different, you know, that even, even papyrus, even papyrus, even

Doug Berger:

curls. Has a time and a place again, would I choose curls? Probably not. Mm-hmm. I think there are more sophisticated versions of it, but can it be kind of fun to use as an initial letter on a child's backpack? Right. Sure.

Johnny Diggz:

That could be fun, right? The, um, I guess, uh, in, in this discussion, um, capitalization matters too because if you. You know, I was just thinking about typing a professional email in choosing a comic sands font, also typing one that's in all caps, or, you know, a message that's in all caps, right. Gets received a certain way versus something that is, you know, capitalized correctly. Or even something that is just lowercase and doesn't, uses no

Doug Berger:

punctuation. Yeah, like, like Twitter for example, was all lowercase originally. And then you have other brands like, uh, brand of brothers that, uh, is in all caps. Yeah. And then there's the playing with weights. So you have typefaces and you want to make sure that they are complimentary and that they're applied correctly and uniformly. Right. So when it comes to typefaces, you want to have contrast. And you also want to have compliment. So there are crif type faces that have complimenting San Crif type faces and vice versa. And there are even decorative type faces, like script or handwritten type faces that can work in harmony with the San Crif and the crif type faces. And when tone calls for it, you might want all three. However, you might also have distinguishing characteristics like maybe are. Brand fonts also encompass different weights. And so not only do we have our open source fonts, we also have variable weight fonts. And so variable weight fonts are, are just absolutely incredible in terms of diversity in what they can present. Um, they're not. Completely ubiquitous when it comes to, uh, desktop publishing using, uh, uh, things like Microsoft Word. However, when you're using Adobe InDesign, for example, uh, you can adjust the, the variable weights, the, whether it's bold, semi bold, or even in between.

Johnny Diggz:

So, oh, I get you. So you can actually, instead of having like five different options where you've got narrow. Uh, you know, semi narrow, regular. Bold, you know, semi bold, bold,

Doug Berger:

something to that effect. Yeah. Yeah. So basically most of, yeah,

Johnny Diggz:

I, that's what I see. Anyway,

Doug Berger:

so it, it just a, a really quick correction. So you'll have narrow, you'll have regular, and you'll have extended, um, and then you'll have the weights. So your weights are gonna be light, thin, regular, medium, bold, semi bold, heavy black. Right, right. There are, those are your, your varying weights. And what's really cool is that you can granularly shift from between one of those in toward another without going all the way toward them. So if a weight. It's too heavy or too light. You can just make a slight adjustment and get it. So it's perfect. It's the Goldilocks of fonts

Johnny Diggz:

something. Um, I, I do a lot of memeing. I like to make my own little memes, specifically Seinfeld memes, so, you know, but, uh, one thing that, uh, I use this little tool that is like, just basically a little graphic edit or a little, uh, image editor specifically for memes and. Canva, it's called, it's called, uh, memento. Cool. And, uh, is it free? Uh, yeah, I think it is. Yeah. Yeah. Great. I think so. Um, I think there's a paid version and a free version. I don't remember. And, and

Doug Berger:

are we sponsored by either of Canva or Memento? No, no, no. But

Johnny Diggz:

we'd like to be, um, the, uh, anyway, one of the things that I have difficulty with is, uh, readability of my caption right underneath, and usually it's over top, uh, especially if it's dialogue. Um, and so I play with things like, uh, shadow and stroke and these, but I, I, I, as a designer, I, I am

Doug Berger:

hurting a

Johnny Diggz:

little bit inside, but I'm listening. So, but all with the goal of making it more readable. Um, and I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the, the typography choice. And, and legibility and that and, and how

Doug Berger:

that, how that works. So when it comes to legibility, there's no question that it's easier to read something that is bold and large and lacks decoration, right? When it is a utility font, like Helvetica, for example, Helvetica Bold is going to generally be incredibly legible even when it has a reduced tracking. And for those listening who are unfamiliar, tracking is the spacing between all of the letters and words. Mm-hmm. Whereas you have kerning, which is your individual spacing between letters. So, um, back to legibility. So. When it comes to legibility, you have to have contrast. That's really what it comes down to. So can you have a thin sans serif type face be legible? Absolutely. So long as there's sufficient contrast and margin, right? Giving enough breathing space. For those words to be read is imperative. So ideally what you have is a weight that is both. Beefy enough to be red, but also thin enough that it matches your aesthetic, right? Unless your aesthetic is big and bold, you don't want to be showing, uh, Gotham Black, for example, when your typeface is really supposed to be Gotham Thin. So how do you fix that? You can resolve it a number of ways. Uh, you can. Make it so it's not overlaying an image. You can make it so there is a cover over a color overlaying the image, and then uh, you have a complimentary color on top. And to be specific about this complimentary color. You have to be super careful because complimentary colors also cre create vibration. So I'm talking about white on black, for example. That's not gonna create as much color vibration as you'd get if you put yellow on purple. So don't put yellow on purple. Put white. On purple or make the purple darker, make the yellow the same, make the yellow lighter, right? You can use varying effects.

Johnny Diggz:

What if you're celebrating

Doug Berger:

Mardi

Johnny Diggz:

Gras and you really want yellow on purple?

Doug Berger:

So, and, and you know what? That's an opportunity to use a stroke or to use an outer glow, but do it sparingly. Make it make sense. Don't do it. As a hack, do it where it is intentional and that it's thoughtful. So,

Johnny Diggz:

um, wrapping up, I I, oh no, I'm having so much fun. I know. We could go, we could literally talk for hours about phones. We could, and I mean,

Doug Berger:

we can start with the a's. Right. And I know your favorite font is Ariel, right? Of course.

Johnny Diggz:

Ariel. Ariel. Bold. Aerial narrow. Are you sure

Doug Berger:

it's your, wait, you mentioned memes. Are you sure it's not impact? It's your

Johnny Diggz:

favorite impact. Seems to be the default in, in the MEMEING world. Uh, for better or worse. I don't, it's worse and it's usually all caps.

Doug Berger:

So, and again, it has to do with legibility. If you look at those memes, it's impact, which is this. Narrow font and which the, the purpose is twofold. One is legibility, and two is being able to cram as many words into that space as possible. Right? But then you'll notice that usually these memes have white. F uh, fonts, right? Yep. So it's impact in white.

Johnny Diggz:

Yeah.

Doug Berger:

And it has a blackout outline. Yeah. And, and those two together, while really discordant definitely makes it legible.

Johnny Diggz:

Right. So because you're going for like boom impact. Understood. Yeah.

Doug Berger:

But is there happy medium? That doesn't use a craptastic font like impact 100%. So really what it comes down to, just a, a quick recap. So, um, when choosing a font. As it relates to a brand, it should be reflective of tone, right? Um, and it should also be, um, it should have complementarity, right? It should basically speak to color schemes and imagery and make sure that everything is. It's complimenting each other. And then we just, we've been talking about legibility, right? That comes down to, uh, different weights, different sizes, making sure that people can, can see what you're putting. Contrast, contrast is, is another component. Uh, proper spacing, line height, right? All of these feed into capitalization and, and title case and lowercase. All of that feeds into how you convey your brand. Through typography.

Johnny Diggz:

Has there been any, um, like looking back, remix has been around for almost 20 years now, and you've been doing this longer than remix has been around just a little. Yeah. And, uh, any, any, uh, time in your, uh, past where, uh, good or bad, um, where, uh, A choice was made and it proved to be? Particularly surprisingly good or surprisingly bad. Wow. Um, I would

Doug Berger:

say that generally speaking, um, we've had. Expected results. The, the times where it was unexpected were actually in the design process where we put things in front of focus groups and we would put out a throwaway design.

Johnny Diggz:

Oh. And they liked that one. And

Doug Berger:

that was the one that won. And what do you do in that case? You, you do your case study again to make sure the data's consistent. Okay. So at, at the end of the day, they, they, the, the only time where we've selected a font where we've been surprised is when we've saw the data and we're like, we don't like the data.

Johnny Diggz:

Well, I like the data that says, this is the end of our show. So thanks for joining us today. Nice segue.

Doug Berger:

Thank you for tuning in to Brand of Brothers. Big thank you to our presenting sponsor, Remixed, the branding agency, along with production assistance from Johnny Diggz, Simon Jacobsohn, and me, Doug Berger. We can't forget music by PRO. Speaking of not forgetting, remember to do that like and subscribe thing and find us at BrandShowLive. com and follow us on the socials at BrandShowLive.