Nobody sets out to read a crisp packet. That's the difficulty with all three of these jobs — packaging, advertising and title design have to work on someone who isn't trying to look.
A custom font is a typeface drawn for one brand or one title, owned or exclusively licensed by them rather than bought off the shelf and shared with everyone else who found it. Done well, it makes a name recognisable before the logo arrives, and holds a campaign together as it moves from a six-sheet poster to a six-inch screen.
Below is roughly how I'd think it through with you, in the order the questions usually come up.
Do you actually need one?
Often not, and it's cheaper for both of us if we work that out early.
You probably don't need a custom font if you're setting one headline, running a single campaign, or working to a deadline measured in days. Licence something good and put the money into photography.
You probably do need one if:
- Your team sets new words in the brand voice regularly, without you seeing them first
- The type has to hold across a product range, multiple markets or several years
- You've been told the font you're using isn't licensed for what you're doing with it
- Everything on the shelf beside you is set in the same three typefaces
That last one is the honest reason most brands come to me. There are only so many good display faces, and your competitors have found them too.
Full typeface, or just lettering?
This is the first real fork, and it changes the cost by an order of magnitude.
Custom lettering is a fixed set of drawn words — a title, a logotype, the front of a pack. It's faster, cheaper, and you can push it further, because every letter is drawn for that exact arrangement rather than for every arrangement.
A custom typeface is a working tool your team can type with. You need it when other people have to set words you haven't seen yet.
Plenty of projects need lettering and think they need a typeface. There's no prize for drawing 300 characters nobody will use.
What packaging, advertising and entertainment each need
The brief is different in each of these, and it changes what gets drawn.
On packaging, type has to identify, persuade and inform in about the space of a postcard, then survive flavours, sizes, legal copy, promotional bursts and bad supermarket lighting. The unglamorous parts matter most: clear numerals for weights and percentages, narrow cuts for awkward panels, language coverage for every market, and behaviour on uncoated stock. A beautiful alphabet that collapses beside the ingredients list is only doing half the job.
In advertising, the point is continuity. When the typography already belongs to you, the photography and layout can change far more confidently around it. Worth checking your licence before you scale anything — a retail font licence usually won't cover a paid campaign, which is the thing that catches agencies out most often. I've written about what licence paid ads actually need.
In entertainment, A title might need menace, speed, nostalgia or glorious bad taste, and then it has to expand into episode graphics, trailers, menus, merchandise and international versions.
Questions to answer
- Where it appears, at the smallest and largest sizes it has to hold
- Whether it needs to animate
- Which languages and territories
- Fixed launch or broadcast dates
- How many people need the files
- Whether it has to work past the first campaign
Get these settled now and you avoid the classic: no euro sign, twelve hours before it ships.
How I work
I start by drawing. That might be real paint on paper, or sketching on my iPad — it depends on the job. Letterforms start to emerge, words get built from the characters to see how they look, and eventually they're redrawn in Glyphs: spaced, kerned, tweaked, checked. Tested, and then tested again.
You can see one worked example in the Reebok typeface I built to be modified.
Working with an independent designer
Large type studios are set up for global programmes: enterprise budgets, multiple scripts, multiple languages—a lot of departments. If that's your project, a larger studio might be the right call.
For a single campaign, a product range or one title, going direct to one designer is usually quicker and more flexible. Nobody translates the idea before it reaches the person drawing it, which matters more than it sounds like it should.
Common questions
How long does a custom font take?
A simple typeface — one weight, basic character set — normally takes about two weeks. A full family can take up to three months. What moves it between those two: how many languages you need, how many alternates per glyph, how many weights and styles, and whether it has to be variable. A single-weight Latin display face is a very different job from a variable family with extended language support and three alternates on every letter.
What does it cost?
Depends on character set, languages and how widely it'll be used. Full breakdown in my guide to custom font pricing.
Do we own it at the end?
Yes. The font is yours.
What formats do you deliver?
OTF, TTF and WOFF2 as standard, and I can deliver in any other format you need. If you're not sure which ones your team actually requires, I've explained the differences in my guide to modern font formats.
Can you extend a font we already use?
Yes, but you'll need permission from whoever made it first. Most licences don't allow modification or extension without the original foundry's agreement, so that's the conversation to have before you brief me.
Can we see something before committing?
Yes. I can do a paid concept round — a small set of drawn characters showing the direction, before you commit to the full job. It's the sensible way in if the brief is still loose, or if you need something to show internally before the budget gets signed off.
Make the words part of the idea
Nearly everything competing for the same attention uses type. Very little of it uses type that could only belong to one brand.
If your next project needs more than a fashionable font and a hopeful drop shadow, talk to me about custom font design.
Written by Simon Stratford, type designer and graphic designer. These are my opinions, reached after too little sleep and too much coffee. You can also follow my antics on @itsmesimonok, or leave a comment below. Despite all the opinions, I’m actually quite nice.