Typography Trends That Are Always in Style

Use these typography trends to help you create marketing materials that will stay fresh and relevant for years to come.

I just LOVE typography.  

Typography is the umbrella term for all things “lettering”:  Typography is the art of using different fonts and text sizes to create a good looking document or website

There are a lot of articles out there on typography trends, and the assumption is that you’re going to change what you’re doing to match something trendy. I wouldn’t recommend that. Instead, I recommend seeing how you can incorporate these typography trends in your marketing materials, social media posts and presentations.

Great Typography NEVER Gets Old

You want to know why I love typography?  Because you can create incredibly sophisticated and beautiful graphic designs by only using text elements. 

(source: VectorStock)

While you can certainly create trendy designs, if you simply understand a few rules of typography, you can ride the trends in typography for years to come.

1. Mix and Match with Italics

Mix and match is one of my favorite typography trends.

To create a mix and match design, all you need to do is take two different fonts that have similar weights (i.e. not too thin and not too thick) and pair them together.

The key is to experiment until you find a combination that you like.

Get the look: 

First, hop over to “What the Font” 

Snap a screenshot of the text for which you want to identify the font.  This will give you all the similar fonts that best match the fonts in the picture.

Then you can go to Canva and search their font library for a similar font. 

Of course, Canva didn’t have the exact fonts, but I was able to find something similar and recreate this typography trend.

2. Highlighted Type

source: VectorStock

Highlighted text always looks great and almost never looks old. This type of design communicates strength and confidence when you use a block style font. 

But, if you make the highlight look like it was handwritten, it can add a bit of human warmth and softness.

Get the look:

Canva gives you two options to do this.

You can select a “text effect” to highlight an entire line of text.

Or, you can select a “handwritten” highlight element and add it to your text.

3. Animated Typography

Used sparingly and simply, animated typography can be extremely effective, especially on the home page of a website or a landing page. 

SurveyMonkey is a great example.

This is my favorite example of this trend.  It’s simple, it’s engaging and does an excellent job sticking to the rule of “5 words in a headline” while actually using more than 5 words.

This is a great way to keep text headlines simple and communicating more than one point.

3. Authentic Handwriting

This trend is being used more and more by brands and marketers looking to connect with their customers on a more personal level. Whether you’re creating graphics for social media, email marketing campaigns, or even flyers and brochures, handwritten fonts can help give your designs that unique personal touch.

How to turn your handwriting into a font:

Making your handwriting into a font is easy. You just need to go to Calligraphr’s website, download a template, write in the template using your own handwriting, and then upload it. The website will digitize your handwriting and turn it into a font file that you can download.

There are a number of websites that offer to turn your handwriting into a font but the most common is Calligraphr. It used to be called MyScriptFont and has had something of a revamp. It isn’t the only service of its kind out there but it does make short work of this process. You will have to register with the site but you can create a single font set for free. If you want to make more, you’re looking at $8 a month.

You will need a printer and a scanner for this to work. The website does everything else.

Here’s how:

1. Head over to Calligraphr and create an account.
2. Download the template and print it as a portrait.
3. 
4. Use a black pen to fill out the templates. 
5. The next step is to scan the completed template and save it as PNG. When you’re ready to scan your template, make sure that the glass on the scanner is clean. 
6. Upload the file to Calligraphr by selecting Upload Template.
7. 
8. Select Add Characters to your font at the bottom.
9. 
10. Select Build Font and confirm by clicking Build to begin the font file creation process.
11. 
12. Download the completed .ttf file from the website.
13. 

That’s all there is to it.

4. Doodles as accents

The more digital we get, the more human-touch we crave.  If your brand currently uses traditional typography such as a blocky san serif, you can add handwritten elements as accents.

Get the look: 

Canva has some wonderful mixed font combinations that you can use in your social media posts, web sites and marketing materials.

This is a basic Canva template and you can see how they use a friendly serif font as a headline with a structured sans serif font to make the point.  And then, you can see that they added a friendly, soft arrow that guides people from one element to another. 

How to use this information

If you’re looking to add a more personal touch to your marketing materials, consider using handwritten fonts, animated typography, or doodles as accents. You can also use these trends to create headlines that are easy to read and communicate more than one point.