Go with What They Know: Font selection

As a designer, you may think you’re making a creative choice, when in reality, the answer can easily be defined by the market. Font selection in no exception. To give an example, with sports, the most common fonts are basic block styles; scripts or specialty fonts are rarely used. So, while it might seem creative to use Chiller for a high school football team named the Phantoms, it probably won’t be effective, as it could clash with the expectations of the customer.

When it comes to design, while you want to stand out and be creative, you also need to take what your audience recognizes into consideration. A font like Chiller is thin and can easily be missed in the white noise of other colors and shapes people see. It also has its own connotation, which is not associated with athletics. Because people expect to see lettering in big, bold, chunky letters, when you stray from that paradigm, you risk a disconnect with your target audience. The team may now be seen as different, but not in a strong way.

Ideas and feelings are often associated with imagery. Those all need to be considered when building designs for specific markets.

-Jimmy Lamb, Sawgrass