Variation of Sameness

In brief, identity design is about distinction and differentiation: setting you, your company, your brand, your products, and your services apart from the competition.

The essence of strategy is choosing to perform activities differently than rivals do. —Michael Porter

Professionally, I have concerns seeing the likes of Brandon Grotesque proposed as a “thoughtful” logotype paired with Gotham for body copy. Better yet, Proxima Nova. Trends are now pushing towards Circular, Brown, Haptik, or Walsheim. Aperçu seems to have come and gone out of style quickly.

Each type family listed is well-designed and worth the purchase. The fonts, designers, and foundries are all excellent — hence the popularity! The point isn’t the letter construction or quality. It’s the ubiquity. (Take a look at TypeWolf’s notes on popular fonts by year and all-time and follow up post about less popular alternatives.) Its easy as an entry level designer to select something safe and familiar: “Just use with Gotham—the go-to, default corporate typeface”.

To take this a step further, we all know Google offers fonts at no charge to use for desktop and web purposes: Open Sans, Lato, Source Sans… again, ubiquity. These fonts are everywhere. Google publicly notes the usage of fonts online. Open Sans is used on nearly 20 million websites, accessed nearly 30 billion times.

As of the week of February 20, 2017

How can a “unique” visual brand stand out with the same typography as everyone else?

I don’t want to say every brand should have a custom font made. That’s not rational or wise. Or even possible. I’d presume a lot of those are web templates, blogs, or sites that don’t carry a strong brand name or much of an identity at all.

But this does bring value to the forefront. A strong identity brings value to a company. A strong identity should—must—include a strong typographic selection that directly affirms a brand’s mission. Does Open Sans reinforce the brand’s goals and aspirations?