Your brand voice isn’t written. It’s drawn.
Six words. Two fonts. One of them is a threat 😎
Everyone writes down how they want to sound in a voice and tone doc, but it all goes haywire unless design leads the charge.
The top line is a wedding vow.
The bottom line is the last thing you hear before the credits.
Same six words. Nobody touched the copy.
Now, you're probably thinking, "I'd never use typefaces like that anyway," and I'm glad you've have the design awareness to not be so stupid 😄
But... even without the caricature, you can still send the wrong message with your type choices and it will mean more than a voice and tone doc ever would.
Don't believe me?
These are all legit, real color palettes and typefaces that could appear on a website. Even if the differences are subtle, the letterforms bring character and inflection to words that go beyond what is being said.
This feels more lovely, graceful, and elegant.
Especially when contrasted with something like this that feels more technical, dark, and hacker-like.
And it isn’t only the letterforms doing that. The color is casting too. Reverse the palettes and the feminine, italicized text and it starts becoming less romanced before you’ve changed a single glyph.
Everybody arrives with a voice doc that more or less sounds just like every other tech brand out there. Confident, warm, a little irreverent, inoffensive, but we’re not afraid to have fun (I guess?).
Then the site gets set in a typeface that is none of those things, in colors that are none of those things, and the dressing wins.
And it makes users confused about who you are.
Your reader feels the page before they read a word on it, so by the time they get down to the headline you spent two weeks arguing about, they’ve already decided what kind of company you are and they’re just checking the fonts and colors you've use.
You can write “we’re playful” in navy Times New Roman until you die. Nobody is going to believe you.
Go set your headline six different ways, hand it to somebody who’s never heard of you, and ask what the letters make them feel. They’ll answer before they finish reading it.
Your brand voice isn’t what the words say. It’s what they’re wearing when somebody reads them.
— Zach
