25 Killer Custom Typefaces – A Brand Design Asset

Chocolate Short

Building Your Brand’s Visual Properties
When creating a corporate image for our clients brands, we focus on building unique brand properties that can be leveraged to become brand assets. A brand’s typeface is one of the visual properties we incorporate into the brand design process, both because type can be a powerful and unique part of a brand’s visual messaging, and because for most brands, the potential of type is entirely overlooked.

Don’t Get Me Wrong, We Love Helvetica
The most common typeface in current brand design is Helvetica or one of its close relatives such as Arial. Whilst Helvetica is a beautifully designed contemporary font, it is what we call a ‘Neutral Face’ – Neutral because it is a clean font with little personality one way or the other, and Neutral because it is found so commonly representing such a range of brands that it is almost impossible to imbue it with distinction or individuality.

Such a Shame
The shame it is that there are infinite type possibilities for brands – restricted only by the creativity and consideration of your brand’s creative agency. Usually this is the result of brand design being left to those more skilled in other areas such as advertising agencies or traditional graphic design studios. Specialist brand agencies with the skills to translate brand strategy into brand identity understand the role customized typography can play in the creation of unique and memorable brands.

Aiming for the Sky
Whilst the examples we’ve collected of the 25 best custom-designed typefaces wont be suitable for all brands in all markets, they do provide a powerful challenge to all brands to ask themselves the big question: “How hard are our brand’s visual assets working for us?”

We recently published a follow-up to this post with another 21 cool custom fonts. You can check it here.

6a00d8341ca70953ef0120a679f2a8970c-800wi

Dripping Chocolate font by Kimberley Reynolds

Ants In Pants Steve Vanscoy
Ants in Pants font by Steven Vanscoy

ComeTogether Satoru Nihei
Come Together font by Satoru Nihei

alfabet in huid (typeface in skin) by Thijs Verbeek.

Alfabet in huid (typeface in skin) by Thijs Verbeek

EggsSuperscript

Egg font by Superscript

Fingertype Jonathan Looman

Fingertype by Jonathan Looman

Folded_Font_B.U.S.K

Folded font by B.U.S.K.

Bent by avraham cornfeld

Bent font by Avraham Cornfield

IQ font2
IQ font1

Toyota’s IQ font by Pierre & Damien

hairy alphabet by Craig Ward

Hairy Alphabet by Craig Ward

Threadfont by am_tm_mitsuko

Thread font by Am Tm Mitsuko

Leaf font by bawkbawk

Leaf font by Bawk Bawk

HouseNumberSuperscript

House Number font by Superscript

Jonana Jennifer Stucker

Jonana font by Jennifer Stucker

Bodyface Kiyoka Katahira

Bodyface font by Kiyoka Katahira

Mojave Rudy Vanderlans

Mojave by Rudy Vanderlans

Touchy-Feely Rick Valicenti

Touchy-Feely by Rick Valicenti

Pixel It jessica nebel
Pixel It 2 jessica nebel

Pixel-It by Jessica Nebel

Value Pack by Robert Bolesta

Value Pack font by Robert Bolesta

Take a seat by Amanda Alessandrine
Take a Seat by Amandine Alessandra

SockAlphabet by TonyVenne

Sock Alphabet font by Tony Venne

SweetAlphabet

Sweet Alphabet font by Unknown Designer

Wearable Type by Amanada Alessandrine

Wearable Type font by Amanda Alessandrine

Karamel1
Karamel2
Karamel3

Karamel Sans by Marta Maštálková

PantyRaid Jennifer Mahanay & Gina Vieceli-Garza

PantyRaid by Jennifer Mahanay & Gina Vieceli-Garza

David Ansett, Brandamentalist
If you’d like daily updates of our brand thinking, you can follow me on Twitter here.
If you’d like to find out more about how to build your brands visual assets, give us a call – we’d be only too happy to help you out.

20 Comments

  1. Graffiti, LSD und mehr | Einfach Übel

    […] LSD (via) LINK ::: GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogle – das Google links unten funktioniert am besten LINK ::: 25 interessante Schriftarten LINK ::: Online zeichnen LINK ::: Clients from Hell LINK ::: Drunk […]

  2. Hi Manfred, glad you liked the type design post – such a critical part of information and brand communications design. Those fonts you mention will add stacks of meaning to your article on eating disorders. The best approach is to follow the links under each typeface to the designers of the fonts. If they have turned them into typefaces they’ll be able to help you with that and also permission to use them.

  3. Hi! these typefaces are amazing! I’m working on a presentation for an exam about a fake chocolate brand and i’m looking to a “chocolate font”. Is it possible to download or use the Dripping Chocolate font or the Karamel one? I do love them!

Post a comment

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,