Our Thinking: Choosing the right font
Typography is largely invisible.
When I mention to non-designer friends that fonts have actually been designed by someone, their heads explode.
Like many, they’d never thought about it, just as I don't think about all the other millions of tasks humans work on every day.
But typography design is a big thing in the design industry. Believe it or not, some people actually spend their time designing each character that appears on your screen.
Normal people usually read words. We designers tend to look at the characters and think, "I wonder if they used XX font for this..."
Millions of font options are available in the market, but you probably only use two or five at the most: Calibri, Cambria and Arial are likely in your RECENT list. Maybe Comic Sans makes an appearance if you are feeling wild or silly.
Fonts convey all kinds of moods. As with everything in the world, there are all sorts of them. Funky, quirky, serious, efficient, elegant, crafty, pick a word, and you will find a suitable match. But as designers, we have other considerations in our mind besides personality when choosing a font for a wayfinding system.
The main thing is always legibility and efficiency. This is where many of the options available get automatically ruled out.
When we pick up a font, we are usually testing these features.
The basic equation is this: best legibility possible + the most reduced space + font in the biggest size possible = great font choice. Plus, of course, having some graphic relationship with the rest of the visual system.
So, what aspects do we consider when choosing a font? Here’s a few:
Timeless design: We need to be mindful of the wayfinding system’s lifespan. Ideally, any system we recommend will remain for 5, 10 or even 15 years. As the design needs to avoid looking outdated after a few years, we steer clear of decorative or highly stylised fonts. Using this same logic, we usually don't recommend using branding fonts as part of our systems. If there is a rebrand, the whole wayfinding becomes obsolete.
Font Category: We usually look at sans-serif fonts, which tend to be more legible, especially at a distance and in low-light conditions. Their clean and simple design makes individual characters and letterforms easier to distinguish.
Basic performance: Does the suite include all the characters/alphabets you require (e.g. is it suitable for bilingual designs)?
Efficiency: We need to fit a good amount of characters per text line. We look for narrow character forms rather than wide extended geometries. Otherwise, we must reduce the font size to fit enough characters as our longest destination name.
Sizing: We look at having a significant x-height, open apertures and balanced counter forms.
Differentiation: We check for a good differentiation between certain characters, like J and I, or A and o, 3 and 8.
As you can see, many things need to be considered. There is no fixed recipe and no right font for every circumstance. It comes down to trying things out, testing and testing again – the same approach for all good design.