Making the Right Font Choice

A Huge Leap

From a business perspective, most of us would do well to follow Google’s lead. The ubiquitous tech company hasn’t been around for even two decades, yet has evolved well beyond its comparatively humble search engine beginnings. What once was a mere website on equal footing with now-irrelevant competitors like HotBot and AltaVista has now spawned a robotic car manufacturer, a mysterious scientific think tank, a rapidly expanding ISP/Cable company, and even a verb.

Meet The New Addition

All that diversification and success occasionally makes it difficult to pay attention to every little thing Google does, which is why you may not have heard about their new logo. Whether or not your personal feelings about the design are necessarily positive, you have to respect the thought process that went into the decision: Google wanted to get more streamlined and visible, especially on mobile, and that’s precisely what they did.

They Can Afford It

If Google, which posted a quarterly net income of nearly $4B earlier this year, can see the value of tweaking their universally recognized branding, then perhaps we all should. For Google, a main concern was increased user migration to mobile, which has historically generated less advertising revenue than legacy platforms — their solution to this problem was multi-faceted:

[T]he real bonus in this change is less about the logo on the homepage; it’s really about the single, multi-colored G logo. This is what will appear and stand out as the portal to mobile search. The use of multiple primary colors is even more distinctly “Google” than the font itself, so adding that element to the standalone G makes it consistent with the brand identify. On our small hand-held devices, this bold, multi-primary-colored capital G stands out far more effectively than the previous lower-case, politely curvy g. Lower case and monochromatic was subtle and endearing; upper case and striped is a pronouncement of “Bam! You’ve Found Google!” which can’t be ignored, even on the go.

Why It Works

The new design, Google’s own creation, is written in a “sans serif” — a class of font that eschews the tiny flourishes at the end of the letters common to other styles (“serifs”). It works well with Google’s modern Material Design philosophy, and the fact that it is less resource intensive means that it scales well on the televisions and smartwatches that Google is now finding itself on in increasing numbers.

What You Can Learn From It

That was Google’s problem, though — what’s yours? Do you need a more legible font in your presentation design? Is your presentation in need of contrasting styles, or a more fun tone? Should you be evoking a particular time period with your copy, for branding and marketing purposes? Take a look at our “Introduction To Fonts For Presentation Design” infographic below for examples of what a different font could do for you.