Great Logo Fonts for Graphic Designers, Freelancers (or anyone else)

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If your company needs a standout logo, one of the most difficult choices is the font. If your font is too simple, it feels like a Microsoft Word file. If it is too complex or ornate, no one can read it. Finding the right balance, as well as finding a font that conveys the mood and purpose of your company, can be a huge challenge. The challenge is the same if you are a small-business owner, entrepreneur or part of a large corporation. Here is a comprehensive list of great logo fonts that combine popularity, uniqueness and readability.

Most popular logos are centered around a simple message. Minimalist logos are often comprised only of a unique font, sometimes even a single letter. Think of popular brands like McDonalds, Facebook or IBM. Whether or not your logo includes symbols or pictures, often the font is the most easily recognizable part. As the face of your company, you’ll want to spend time perfecting the font in order to create a logo that is eye-catching and conveys the mood and tone of your company. In the sea of available fonts, that is often easier said than done.

How do You Find a Font?

First you need to sift through a few basic categories. Do you want your logo to be seen as trendy, new and ultra-modern? Or are you looking for a more structured, reserved and professional look? Each of these broad categories will be used to help you find the perfect font for your logo. In a sea of different fonts, this list will focus mainly on free fonts, but if you wish there are thousands of fonts to purchase, or you can hire a graphic designer to search for a font for your logo.

Professional Graphic Designer

Ratings: Explained

Each of these fonts will be rated based on category. They will be given a star rating, from 1-5. These ratings are based on some of the following categories:

  • Readability: What’s the point in a font you can’t read? Although it might look fun, quirky or interesting, a vivid font that is unreadable will often do more harm than good. If you are looking to stand out, strike a balance between the need for extreme serifs and the need to read.
  • Customer Reviews: Although you want a font that is unique to your company, it’s also helpful to know your font is already well liked. An engaging logo starts with an engaging font, so fonts that are already highly rated will be great choices for your logo.
  • Professional Graphic Designer Picks: What do the pros say? These individuals have spent their days looking over literally thousands of fonts. Leave it to them to help you decide whether a font is going to be well received, indecipherable or just plain boring.
  • Customization: Some great fonts have a few good characters, but generally feel a bit flat. Whether it is lacking features like bold and italics or the capital letters look identical to the lower case versions, these fonts don’t give you much in the way of versatility. When you choose a font for your logo, you are not only choosing the logo but your whole branding. Every written piece of marketing should match, blend with or feel stylistically similar to your logo font. No pressure, but your logo font can inform your entire marketing strategy.

Top Logo Fonts

Regardless of the purpose of your logo or the industry of your company, there is an excellent font for you. Here are several categories of fonts that are great for your style.

Minimalist Logos

These logos are subtle and unadorned. Minimalism is very popular in the graphic design world. Choose one of these fonts to show professional expertise and an orderly, sleek look.

Minimalist Logos
  • Museo Sans  This font is very readable and has a large variety of weights, including italics. Choose 100- or 900-weight if you are looking for a free font. It doesn’t offer much contract, but the geometric quality of the lines feels very refined. It receives 4.5 out of 5 stars.
  • TT Commons – This sans serif font uses a closed aperture to create a straightforward, elegant feel. Its no-nonsense look borders a professional font, but the minimalist nature of the contrasting strokes gives it a more artistic feel. It does not have the same variety as the Museo Sans, however. This great font choice gets 4 out of 5 stars.
  • FF Din – An extremely versatile font, it supports fractions, subscripts, case sensitivity and a range of other special characters. It also boasts 20 different weights, including several shades of black and gray, and round fonts. If you are looking for an extended tree of fonts under the same style, this is the perfect choice for your minimalist logo. It receives 4.8 out of 5 stars.

Professional Logos

If minimalism felt straightforward, these fonts will prove there are always more bold, distinct choices available. Professional fonts range from bold to bland, but these represent some of the most striking professional choices. Choose these fonts to show you and your business mean, well, business.

Professional Logos
  • Helvetica – If popularity equals success, this is one of the most successful fonts around. Due to its omnipresence on word processors, this workhorse of a font has provided the text for many businesses. If you are looking for a unique business font, then this is not the one for you. But if you want to promote the stability, trustworthiness and maybe even nostalgia of your company or product, consider Helvetica. This font gets 4 out of 5 stars.
  • Oswald – A great free choice, this font is particularly suited to web design. It has a bold look, and the letters are designed to work within the grid of pixels in more screens. It works well on websites but may be a bit too plain for a logo font. It receives 4.3 out of 5.
  • FF Meta – An artistically minded professional will find this font has just enough style to feel unique, yet standardized enough to feel familiar. It was a very popular font in the early 1990s and still offers great flexibility for your logo. It earns 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Quirky Logos

You want to choose a font that helps convey the feelings of your business. If you have an upbeat, quirky and modern business, these fonts are a great way to promote that. Regardless of the type of business, these fonts are for logos that convey feelings more than information.

Quirky Logos
  • Bobber Typeface – This unique and strangely nostalgic font is designed using a grid, yet the characters feel far from geometric. The lines are elegant and ornamental but in a down-to-earth way that could promote a variety of businesses. The font is flexible, with light, solid and all-caps versions. It receives 4.5 out of 5 stars.
  • Sablon Type – If you want your logo to feel like a techno concert or a rave, this trendy font uses partially filled-in letters to give a vibrant, modern look. It’s free, and there are a few different versions to test out. While the readability suffers a little, it’s eye-catching and easily conveys an emotional state. If you are looking for a standout, quirky font, this one earns 4.7 out of 5 stars.
  • Handcrafted Vintage American Style Font – With curvy lines, nostalgic vintage appeal and four styles, this flexible and creative font is striking and engaging. Offering more ornamental upper case letters and almost handwritten lowercase letters, it has a healthy balance between vibrant and muted tones. Whether it is a call to travel the world, an invitation to stay at home or a promise of some other adventure, this font packs a lot of emotive power. However, some of the uppercase letters are hard to read. It comes at the reasonable price of $18, and deserves a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Extreme Logos

If quirky doesn’t offer enough striking fonts, try these extreme and wild ones. Some border on plain ridiculous while others are quite creative and engaging. Whenever you want to stand out and make bold artistic choices, these fonts are highly entertaining and memorable.

Extreme Logos
  • Hair Type – As the name implies, this oddly engaging font is made to look like it is growing hair. The letters are based off Helvetica bold and offer a very creative look. It’s a free font, so try it out and decide if it fits your mood. The practicality of using this odd font, however, only earns it 3 out of 5 stars.
  • Hyped Font – An adrenaline-fueled font full of random shapes, interesting choices and futuristic appeal, it’s equal parts eye-catching and hard to read. Some letters are almost impossible to discern without context. The A, for instance, looks like a triangle. If you are looking for a hybrid between logo and font, this is a great choice. However, if you are concerned with readability, this font is probably too extreme. It gets 4 out of 5 stars.
  • Sabo Retro – A great combination of readability, retro feelings and digital style, this font is modeled after old arcade games. It has an instantly recognizable tie to arcades and video game systems which you can use to your advantage. Depending on your company’s product or service, this font could be a great way to instantly convey your tone and feelings to your customers. This font receives 4.7 out of 5 stars.

Buyer’s Guide: How Do I Choose?

Now that you’ve explored a wide range of fonts in multiple styles, take a few minutes to think about the kind of logo you are looking for. Whether your logo is striking, muted, quirky or uniform, it will be most successful if it follows your company’s views on one or more of the following areas.

Readability

Of course, text on your logo will do little good if you can’t understand it. A key part of any logo is being memorable. You don’t want people to just remember the symbol of your logo; you want them to remember the name or phrase. Some fonts, like any of the professional or minimalist choices, are very clear and designed to be readable even when read from a distance. Others, like the Sablon Type or Hyped Font, are difficult to read even up close. Keep in mind where your customers will most likely read your logo and how easily they can comprehend it.

Uniqueness

Most fonts aren’t quite as unique as Hair Type, but the goal is to find the best font that people associate with your brand. If you pick a very popular font like Helvetica, they may recognize it but won’t associate it with your company.

Tone

The tone is most easily set when you stay within one category of fonts. Is your company’s market strategy minimalism, professionalism, quirky or extreme? These all convey a very different tone to your clients and customers.

Mood

Similar to tone, mood is more emotional than intellectual. Do you want your company emanating nostalgia, high aesthetic value or no-nonsense formality? Fonts can be incredibly emotional if used correctly and consistently throughout your branding.

Popularity

This could be seen as the opposite of uniqueness. While it is important to stand out and be memorable, you also want to be likeable. A taco truck logo using Hair Type is unique, but it will probably not attract many customers. Strike a balance between conformity and nonconformity in order to display uniqueness and popularity. The exact font that achieves this will depend largely on your business and competitors in your industry.

Final

Now that you have seen the top fonts for logos and considered some essential decisions, you are ready to choose the best pick for your company. Finding the right font can seem like an impossible task, and after looking through countless lists they may all seem the same. However, these fonts represent some of the most engaging, professional, quirky and extreme fonts available for graphic designers, small-business owners or anyone else who needs to make a logo and brand their business.