The most iconic logos are known for their fineness, intelligence, but also the fact that they are pretty much well-known by anyone in the world! Needless to say, it is not only their company’s position in the market which made them so recognizable. The well-chosen color, typeface, and overall logo design is what makes them excellent.
In this article, we have chosen the 10 best fonts that can be used for your logo design. This list of fonts has been narrowed down by the design professionals on DesignBro’s team. They have been used by many famous brands’ logos, and have definitely paved the way to their successes.
1) Gillette – Futura Extra Black Italic font
Futura Extra Black Italic, belonging to the Sans-Serif group, had everything it needed to become the protagonist of the Gillette logo. This elegant, razor-shaped design is constructed from a typeface belonging to square fonts trend. The creative and modern outcome is based on geometric shapes.
Square font trends are divided into families: Futura, ITC Avant Garde, Gotham, and Montserrat. Futura typeface was designed by Paul Renner (Bauer’s font foundry) in 1924–1926, and it was inspired by Bauhaus philosophy. This cool font, already from its beginning, was a manifestation of a new approach to design. Strongly rejecting decorative, redundant elements, it was considered to be the most functional font to use.
Since sans-serifs are the easiest to read digitally, it is a popular font used for the web. Sans-serifs are also adopted by other big-name companies such as LinkedIn, Calvin Klein, and The Guardian. However, the brilliance of Gillette logo comes from the perfect fit of a modern font to the company’s objectives. Cool and creative elements have also been added to the design, with a slanted razor-like cut implemented on the ‘G’ and ‘I’ letters. The italics used for this logo bring additional dynamics to the table.
The clever way of joining a good font and the imagery of a razor cut in the logo design in such a subtle fashion ultimately resulted in Gillette’s perfect logo.
2) Coca-Cola – Spencerian Script font
Coca-Cola, a popular logo well-known throughout the whole world, was made with the use of a Spencerian Script Font. Script type styles (among which is the Spencerian Script font) are based off writing styles. They give off a friendly next-door neighbor feeling, just as if your neighbor were to step by your place for a coffee, or in this case, a Coca-Cola drink.
Script typefaces are highly recommended to use when you want your brand to seem familiar, personalized, and real, as opposed to the stiff, business-like design approach. Spencerian Script Font, in particular, became super popular in the United States in the second half of the 19th century and was developed by Platt Rogers Spencer.
At first, it was used in business surroundings and business colleges where Spencer worked. Eventually, it moved its way into primary schools as cursive was considered to be a cool way to write at that time. In fact, it was a writing style that many American kids learned at school. Recently, the font has become a bit more modern as it became a little fatter with more rounded ends on some letters, but in all honesty, it hasn’t really changed significantly since the time it was invented.
Spencerian fonts are highly suitable for wedding invitations, greeting cards, certificates, initial caps, and headlines. However, they shouldn’t be utilized when writing blocks of text as they can be difficult to read at small sizes. It is also good to note that you should not use more than one script font in a logo – this kind of abundance doesn’t serve well in design.
3) Adidas – Avant Garde Gothic Demi font
Avant Garde Gothic is another example from the acclaimed square font trends family which was created based on the Bauhaus philosophy. This typeface was released in 1970, and it was born as a reincarnation of the Avant Garde magazine’s logo! The development of this typeface took some time and it was made by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase who at the time were partners in a design company.
ITC Avant Garde Gothic typeface was subsequently utilized by brands for media campaigns and promotional posters. One of them being Adidas, a German sports apparel manufacturer founded in 1948 in Herzogenaurach by Adolf Adi Dassler. Today, it is currently the second largest sportswear company in the world.
Additionally, the font has also been used across the film and music industry, as you might have noticed from the visual designs of Insecure (TV series), Parker Brothers, Ora (Rita Ora’s music album), and even Adele’s 21 album!
4) American Apparel – Helvetica Black font
Helvetica Black modern font, with a little more tight spacing, was used for The American Apparel logo design. One must admit that these fairly universal typefaces are actually the best fonts for logos. This manipulation was meant to convey a sense of simple and contemporary look and feel. One of the world’s most-used typefaces – Helvetica, a Max Meidinger’s great shot (the one which happens only once for a lifetime), is utilized by the tremendous amount of companies, from the smallest and humble, up to the great successes such as American Airlines logo, BMW, Bad Company, High School Musical, Coke Boys (French Montana), Blood Diamond, Vetements Logo, Arm & Hammer Logo, Sideways, What Women Want, Crate & Barrel, Xenoblade Chronicles, Staples, Bernie, Captain Phillips, Epson, First Take and American Apparel – a clothing manufacturer in the United States founded by Canadian businessman Doy Charney in 1989.
5) Disney – Walt Disney Script font
The Walt Disney Script font belongs to no other company than Walt Disney itself! Script fonts are said to be occasionally difficult to read, but it is not a threat when it comes to the Disney logo. We all know the brand it represents already from afar and without reading it because when the logo design is simply that good, it just speaks for itself.
Script style typefaces have a personality. They all appear to be written by hand, and by these very means, they become friendly and inviting. The goal of the so-called decorative fonts, the larger family of Script style fonts, is to make texts more distinctive and recognizable. They are used prominently for logos and are avoided for longer pieces of text as they decrease readability.
Essentially, decorative fonts are extremely creative, very original, and they convey a strong message within their design. It is also advised not to combine additional icons and shapes with decorative fonts since they are already incredibly distinctive. The typeface of the logo design of one of the largest media conglomerates in the world had to contain all the above-mentioned features. Today, the Walt Disney Script font is probably one of the most recognizable and the quickest to associate with its brand.
6) Vogue – Didot font
The most elegant of all fonts, Didot requires not more than one rapid glance to notice its refined and luxurious aesthetics. Didot font was invented by French type funders Pierre Simon Fournier and Firmin Didot, and one of the most popular fashion magazines in the world, Vogue, made a great choice by using it in its logo.
It is a well-known fact that serif is a decorative line or stroke on a letter. These kinds of fonts are great to use on paper, as readers see and recognize them faster than sans-serifs. They are exceedingly popular among brands willing to give an impression of luxury, exclusivity, and authority. Since 2019, Serif fonts have been back in fashion, as seen by the beautiful Vogue logo design.
The Didone family of fonts are characterized by the vertical axis, contrast between thick and thin strokes, geometric construction, and a narrower underlying structure with flat, unbracketed serifs. Didone fonts elicit a modern look and feel since the time it was born, and they were initially used as a standardized, general-purpose font for printing. It was invented since 18th-century, and examples of typefaces from this family include: Arepo, Didot (used by Vogue), Walbaum, and Bodoni.
7) FedEx – Futura Bold font
We owe FedEx’s spectacular logo design to Lindon Leader. However, we should feel even more grateful for the author of Futura Bold font because the logo itself wouldn’t have flourished so amazingly without a great typeface base.
As it was already mentioned in the Gillette’s example, the whole square font trends are divided into families: ITC Avant Garde, Gotham, Montserrat, and Futura, which was designed by Paul Renner in between 1924 to 1926. FedEx is the pinnacle of logo design for many designers, particularly with its use of negative space. Futura font’s stable and modern Bauhaus-driven square shape is equally positively received by graphic designers!
FedEx wanted a bold logo that would allow customers to know that they were dealing with a company that was determined and reliable. Though what is not commonly mentioned, is that FedEx font is a combination of Univers 67 and Futura Bold. These two fonts allowed the designer to create the iconic arrow hidden in between the letters ‘E’ and ‘X’.
8) Google – Product Sans font
Futura-like designs have never been so loved by audiences before. Google took Futura’s brother, the Product Sans font, at its heights with their amazing 2015 colorful logo project. Last year, the internet was flooded with news regarding the upgrades in Google’s main display. The Gmail interface font changed from Arial to Product Sans, and the default font for email and messages shifted from Arial to Roboto.
Both Product Sans and Roboto are fonts that were created by Google. Product Sans is a typeface similar to Futura that Google designed back in 2015 for branding purposes. They call it simple, humble, and approachable, with a light design touch. The current Google logo replaced the old serif-font with this logo.
Google’s Product Sans is a custom and geometric sans-serif font designed along with Google’s new visual identity. The font is unfortunately published only under restricted license: “Google offers many fonts under open source licenses. This is not one of them. Please see Google Fonts for options you can use.” As the authors say further: “It was developed to respond and grow with the changing needs of our users”. This typeface system takes into account scale, interaction, and legibility.
To pump the situation up even more, they call their design mathematically pure as it is made of geometric circles while the friendly style is comprised of cool, geometric forms and schoolbook letter printing. Another fancy feature of this font is the stylistic alternates for specific glyphs to avoid redundancy in product lockups. One of the most distinguishing features is the angle of entry and exit on terminals of each letter. It is built on an open approach, ending stroked at about 45 degrees where possible, and preferring to cut terminals perpendicular to the tangent of the stroke.
9) Harrods – Famous Label font
Handwritten-like fonts make it impossible not to be seen as tailored and personalized fonts. Handwriting-like fonts are different and creative. Harrods’ Famous Label font is one of these examples. Harrods department store, a brand that has existed for a hundred years, stands for luxury, elegance, and refined beauty. Although it may seem hard to say that the Famous Label font is one of the best fonts for logos due to their extremely unique style, at the end of the day, logo design is all about finding the very specific, elaborated style of typeface that fits your brand.
The final designer of Harrods’s logo is a creative agency called Minale Tattersfield. This typeface was invented in 1967 and modified in 1984. It is pretty clear that handwritten logos provide that personal touch to the brand they belong to. When describing the use of Script fonts family for the logo design process, we are surely talking about brands which are multi-dimensionally creative. In the case of good branding, a company’s creative team must invest in the emotional touch-points of the logo as they can evoke trust and loyalty in recipients.
Harrods utilized its established brand perception effectively to build a culturally strong brand. The story all started in 1849 when London merchant, Charles Harrod, relocated his market from Southwark to Knightsbridg. They rebranded into a retail operation that offered medicines, perfumes, clothing, and food. The first signature-looking script which later developed into its brand name was born then.
It was assumed that the first creative director, giving his very own personality to the whole brand concept, was the owner himself Charles Harrod. After years of existence, for some time the use of a signature was abandoned (or just not used so abundantly) and replaced with architectural photographs. In the early 20th century, Harrods was experimenting a lot although they always remained attached to an elegant script style.
One must admit it still stands as a perfect choice for this kind of brand. In the 1920’s, Harrods opted for a sophisticated underline to the cursive letters in its brand name. This is where we arrived at the image of their current logo design. However, the 1940s brought yet another novelty – serifs. The overall elegance of the logo was kept, but the personalized script style was missing.
In 1949, Harrods celebrated its 100th birthday and went back to its cursive lettering style. A standardized old/new script version made its way into television adverts in 1952. Fortunately for Harrods, the creative agency, Minale Tattersfield, which branded itself by a ‘scribble’ logo, understood Harrods’ needs perfectly.
Only minor updates were introduced from then to the 1980s. Contemporarily, the color palette and typography (Harrods Green Pantone 574C and Harrods Gold Pantone 871C) are visual touch-points that promote the ideals of confidence, sensation, glamour, and overall British heritage. They emphasize a fine balance between the respect of the old and the implementation of the new to ensure a contemporary brand identity.
Harrods presents itself as a precious and rare brand with a good reputation and great vision. This goes hand in hand with its logo design which was created along with the personality of the brand. Important points to takeaway from Harrod’s logo story is that the coherence and truthfulness of a brand represented in a logo is what wins over visual decorations.
10) Microsoft – Segoe font
To create a great and memorable logo for your brand, there are certain factors that you must keep in mind. Firstly, it must be appropriate for its intended audience. Second, it must be kept simple. Lastly, it should be designed with a timeless feel to it.
In August 2012, Microsoft unveiled its new corporate logo typeset in Segoe, replacing the logo the company had used for the last 25 years. Segoe is a branding font used by Microsoft and partners to produce material for print and advertising purposes. The Segoe name is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation, although the typeface was originally developed by Monotype. It has better readability than fonts previously used by the company such as Tahoma, Microsoft Sans Serif, and Arial.
Segoe UI is optimized for ClearType, which is on by default in a Windows desktop. This nice typeface was designed to be a humanist sans-serif with no strong character or distracting quirkiness to it. In general, Windows collection of fonts (installed as a system-wide resource) is accessible for everyone. Any application installed on your Windows computer will access them automatically, use them to display text-based content on screen, and send that text-based content to an output device such as a printer.
Is including Segoe UI typeface in your non-Windows desktop? Unfortunately, Segoe UI is both a user interface and corporate branding font, and it is not available for use outside of Microsoft products on other platforms. However, Selawik typeface is also nice, a bit similar and is free to use. When trying to obtain Segoe UI, which is not for sale, remember that buying a copy of Windows 7 would be a legitimate way of obtaining the Segoe UI font for personal use.
Segoe was designed by Steve Matteson during his employment at Agfa Monotype. He created a range of weights and italics with a humanizing feel to them. As you can see, Segoe UI has a true cursive italic, unlike the oblique used in fonts like Frutiger and Helvetica.
Besides having grown up in the design Industry, Christiaan has advised some of the world’s largest companies on their branding & packaging designs. Has been the resident judge for design awards, and has spoken at numerous global design & marketing events. Christiaan founded the London office of the award-winning Cartils agency, and has founded the DesignBro.com platform.
