Why You Shouldn't Use Your Logo Font Everywhere

One of the biggest logo design rules I believed for years turned out to be wrong.

The branding rule has always been:

“No more than two to three fonts.”

Since that rule automatically includes your logo font, it looks like the typography game is going to be pretty sparse. Pick a paragraph font, a heading font, and you maybe have one more for your logo. I believed this devoutly.

Until I saw this video by Bright Coal.

This statement changed my mind:

“Don’t use your logo font anywhere else but your logo. Why would we do this? Because it makes your logo less special. It starts to look more like words on a page.”

For a long time, many fonts were off limits to me because “they look great for two words but terrible in a heading.” And it’s true.

Designers create a great-looking logo in something like Agency FB, then expect it to also make a great heading font (it doesn’t.)

UnifrakturCook is an epic logo font, but I had to hold back because it wouldn’t work in other places.

And that’s because it shouldn’t.

The other fonts (and yes, more than two) should an extension of the personality developed in the logo. Designers think they have to use their logo’s font everywhere out of outdated rules, or sometimes, out of laziness.

It truly is easy, like Josh said in the video, to choose a super interesting logo font, a safe body font, then let the logo font do the work of the brand. The problem is that your brand is much more than two fonts, and you’re selling yourself short when you stop there.