How to pick the best fonts for your business brochures

Business brochures are mainly designed for attracting attention in a public venue or providing more information to interested parties. While many design rules apply to the efficient construction of these versatile business resources, the selection of font types is one of the most fundamental tasks.

Choose the right font to get your brochure noticed

Brochures are one of the most versatile of all the promotional items. Don’t waste the document’s potential to reach your target audience by off-handedly selecting any old wacky or bizarre font. Above all else, your brochure must be visually appealing, reliable and readable. There are some primary concepts of type font selection and use of which you should be familiar to achieve these:

Font types

Ten font type commandments
  1. Less is more: keep with three main fonts for professional promotional print materials.
  2. Choose fonts that either contrast or conform to each other.
  3. BOLD is for emphasis only: do not bold your entire brochure.
  4. Opposites attract: pair a thin font with a wide font or a clean sans serif with a frilly script.
  5. Choose an elegant san serif for your headline and similar in weight serif font for body copy.
  6. For print items, the body of the draft is most legible in a serif font.
  7. Use the San-serif fonts for quick reads and legibility. It will give your brochure a professional appearance.
  8. Times New Roman is common but not necessarily the best selection for your brochure.
  9. Ornamental fonts such as Old English were not designed to be used all caps.
  10. Match the font style to your message. For example: don’t use comic sans for serious information and don’t use Helvetica for a party invitation headline.
Things to avoid when selecting font type
  1. Do not use more than three fonts in your brochure. Too many fonts make the brochure look unprofessional and tacky, and make it hard for readers to comprehend.
  2. Avoid round fonts with overly large x-heights – the size of the type from the baseline to the top of a lowercase x- such as ITC Garamond Light, ITC Avant Garde, or Century Gothic. These fonts make your lines look pushed together.
  3. Use a serif sans-serif fonts but not one that is condensed; this makes the font look mashed together giving the brochure an illegible appearance.
  4. Stay away from overly delicate “spidery” fonts in particular: Goudy Old Style, New Baskerville, New Caledonia, Monotype Baskerville, Centaur, Adobe Garamond.
  5. Avoid high contrast fonts like Bodoni or Didot; they require delicate adjustment of spacing for them not to look cluttered and messy.
  6. Don’t use Helvetica or Arial for brochure copy, because at small sizes these two become awkward with letters and numbers together.

Fonts that are clear, simple and easy to read make communicating your message easier and more effective.

Large Run Full Color Brochure
Keep in mind that fonts that may look beautiful on screen might not have the same effect when printed on brochures or flyers. Proper font selection will determine the readability of your brochure. Fancy is not always the best choice! And this is the reason font choice becomes one the most significant tasks in brochure designing. So keep informed and look up for professional printing services for your next business brochures.