Still, companies change their logotypes and signatures all the time for a variety of reasons. Sony Canada did it recently. A few years ago, Telefonica, the largest Spanish telecommunications group did it. Before that it was Opel. Last year Bell Canada parted ways with one of the most expensive logos ever conceived in this country, to go with a retro look. Welcome back, Ma Bell. And the list goes on. Wow! And how on earth do you pick one font (out of hundreds of thousands) to print the name of the company? How do you decide the best shape for the text that goes below the little drawing of the Idon’tknowwhat that will eventually become the logo? Well, here’s the catch: you know that it is not one font, it is not one company, but the whole industry; it is not what you have seen and learned and it is not a mere summary of all the experience and knowledge of your clients. It is all that combined into one idea with universal appeal. It is what is left after distilling. Someone said – In order to do great design you need a great client, and I couldn’t agree more.

Sometimes an historical moment, or even fashion can dictate the final choice and its success or failure. I had a friend, back in Barcelona, a graphic designer who worked on his latest book about modern architecture in Spain for almost a year. He chose one font for all his titles. By the time the book hit the shelves the first part of The Matrix trilogy was in theatres and it turned out that the art director of the movie used the exact same font. Whoever saw the movie and then read the book utterly disliked the latter. Without the movie, the font would have been just fine. Very bad timing indeed.

Many times the use of the same font for branding purposes is done consciously. Just look around and you’ll see how many businesses look like Apple or Microsoft - their fonts only, of course.   Unfortunately at other times all of the knowledge and experience in the world doesn’t mean a thing because the final choice is going to be simply someone’s whim – it is not about market values, customer needs, history, but someone’s personal preferences – I’d better not elaborate on that.

There are definitely rules that can be broken when needed, but there are certainly numerous limitations as well, in both media and technology. Choosing a font for a logo is different from choosing one for a book. A logo for a billboard has nothing to do with th subtitle of a movie we see in the cinema.  The size undoubtedly matters.  There is a huge misconception of large being clearer and more visible. That reminds me of people who speak to strangers by shouting hoping that would be the best way to communicate.  Or, the misconception that we need to put as much as possible on the front page of our website in order to capture someone’s attention. We all know that the average user only stays there for a few seconds, and by not engaging him or her, they will leave and we will burn in hell. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

It has never been about quantity, it is a quality only, loud and clear. It is about good content and elegant design.  Furthermore, the need for an easy update (does an “easy update” exist?) will determine the font in many cases. The Internet, for instance, is a whole different beast from printed material. Browsers are limited to interpreting only a half dozen decent fonts, one of them being Helvetica (Arial), and that determines, on a large scale, the look and feel of textual parts of the Internet. If you want to jazz up your text you have to do it by producing bitmaps, animated gifs or video but bear in mind that there is an issue with Search Engine Optimization. Google and Adobe have announced recently that new technology has been developed and that Flash is finally going to be searchable.

The second most important aspect of type limitations has to do with Content Management Systems. If you are serious about your website you are going to get yourself a pro CMS package that will allow you to manage your content according to your needs, without having a Web Master on your payroll. And here, all your text design goes back to a few fonts recognized by the most common browsers.

Hallelujah Helvetica!