Does Your Brand Need a Custom Typeface?

Clients sometimes come to us asking for a bespoke typeface when a few thoughtful changes to an existing design would meet their needs. We start by looking at what the typography needs to do and how much of an existing design already works. If a few details need adjusting, customization may be enough. If the concept calls for a fundamentally different design, it may be time to consider another typeface or develop a new one.

There are three main routes:

• Retail typeface. License an existing family and use its available styles and features.
• Customization. Adapt an existing typeface to meet requirements it does not yet cover.
• Bespoke typeface. Commission a new design developed around your brief.

Here, I use “bespoke” specifically for development from scratch; “custom” is a broader term that can also include adaptations.

An adaptation might involve redrawing a few letters to echo the shapes in a brand’s logo. It could also mean adding a brand symbol that people can insert while typing, without placing a separate graphic in the layout. Both changes build on a typeface that already suits the project.

Before choosing a route, it helps to identify where the typography will appear, which languages it needs to support, and what you expect it to contribute to the identity. You don’t need to know which route is right before talking to us. We can help you work that out; this article explains what goes into the decision.

Before you start looking at fonts, it helps to understand what you need yours to do.

Start with a few real applications: a page of the website, a presentation slide, a piece of packaging, or a product screen. Use the actual content, including the longest headings and smallest labels. These examples give the brief a scale and a context that a mood board alone cannot provide.

Decide where the typeface should carry the identity. A display face used for short headlines can have a different role from the font used for instructions or interface text. You may need one family to cover both, or a distinctive headline face paired with a quieter text face. Establishing that division early helps define how much of the system needs to be developed.

Describe the intended character in relation to the audience and the product. Words such as “friendly” or “precise” are a starting point; explain what they mean in this particular setting. Doyle and Bottomley’s research on font–product congruity links perceived appropriateness partly to how well a typeface's associations fit a product’s¹. For a design brief, that suggests a useful question: what should this typography communicate here, and what associations would be misleading?

List the languages and writing systems the team will use, then test representative text in each. Include local letterforms and punctuation, as well as any specialist needs such as currency symbols or figures that align in columns. If the team needs particular forms to appear by default, put that in the brief too. It is a separate requirement from simply having those forms somewhere in the font.

Consider who will use the files and in which applications. A designer preparing campaign artwork and a colleague editing a presentation may need different ways to access the same features. Test the actions those people will perform, including changing styles and entering text, rather than judging only a finished specimen.

Finally, record the launch date, available budget, and usage scope. If exclusivity matters, specify whether it concerns a modified version, the whole design, or a period of time. With these requirements written down, you can assess existing families and identify the gaps a commission would need to fill.

You don’t need a finished brief to get started. On a discovery call, we can talk through these questions together and help identify what your project actually needs. To arrange a conversation, email clients@schrifteria.xyz.

A retail typeface is a practical choice when an existing family meets the project’s essential requirements. The work then lies in selecting the right styles and establishing how to use them: the hierarchy, spacing, and relationship between headings and text. A brand can make deliberate typographic decisions while using the font files exactly as supplied.

Before treating a preferred letterform as a missing feature, check the family’s alternatives. SFT Schrifted Sans, for example, includes standard and Compact widths, a Headline Set, and alternate forms of letters such as “a” and “g”. It also provides tabular and oldstyle figures². Those options let a designer explore different settings within the same family. Selecting an existing alternate is part of using the typeface; requesting a new drawing would change the scope.

Compare those options in the same layout, with the same text. Start with a default setting, then change one variable at a time. A different width may address a line-length problem; an alternate letterform may bring a word closer to the intended character. Check the result in context before deciding that the font itself needs to change.

Pay attention to the less prominent parts of the identity too. Try a paragraph of body copy, a short label, and a table of prices. The headline that first attracted you to a family may rely on a particular weight or feature combination, while other styles need to do quieter work. Judge each against its assigned role.

The limitation is exclusivity. A standard retail license generally allows other customers to use the same design, so assess how much the identity depends on exclusive letterforms. If the family works across the required applications and its available features provide enough flexibility, there may be little reason to commission changes. If a specific gap remains, you now have a clear starting point for a customization brief.

As your brand develops, you may want more of its personality to come through in everything you write, from campaign headlines to everyday messages. Customization can give that communication a character of its own, extending beyond the logo.

Customization also makes sense when the design already works but the font needs an additional function or an easier way to access its features. Establish what needs to change and what should remain consistent with the original design.

For Bulgarian clients including the agency Direct Media Kres and the hotel group Sharlopov Hotels, we prepared versions of SFT Schrifted Serif with Bulgarian Cyrillic forms set as the default. The Latin character set remained unchanged, and the standard Cyrillic forms were retained as a stylistic set. The adaptation changed which drawings appeared in ordinary typing, while keeping the alternatives available.

This is a useful distinction when evaluating a font. A family may already contain the local forms a team needs, but making those forms the default can be a separate requirement. In this case, the work concerned the behavior of an existing design, with no need to develop a new set of letterforms.

Digiknall’s brief involved a more expressive adaptation. The agency had selected SFT Ritam Sans and wanted to integrate a colorful Boom symbol into the font. We adapted the symbol for use on its own and within text, including replacements for “o”, “i”, the period, and the exclamation mark. The resulting version was named Digi Ritam³.

The implementation also had to suit the team’s workflow. During the project, testing showed that accessing the features through typography menus was inconvenient in Keynote. We grouped the expressive features in a separate BlackBoom style, making them accessible through a font-style change. The existing typeface remained the foundation; the additional drawing and engineering addressed how the brand element would work in use.