Creative Typography in Ads: How to Get It Right

Creative typography can turn simple copy into a profound message. In this article, yellowHEAD Creative shares how to use creative typography in the most effective way to meet your brand goals.

Table of Contents

• What is Creative Typography?
• Typography in Video Ads
• Why Use Creative Typography in Advertising?
• How and Where to Use Ads with Typography
• Trends
• Best Practices
• Good Examples of Typography in Ads
• FAQ
• Conclusion

What is Creative Typography?

Creative Typography is the art of designing text to be clear and visually appealing. The added element of design to plain text can transform simple copy into a profound message and is often the medium of choice used by graphic designers to grab the viewer’s attention.

The main artistic components of typography are font style, structure, and color. Each one can influence the overall look of the text and impact the message differently. When combined carefully, these elements elicit certain emotions from the viewer and help the designer convey a message to the audience.

Fonts and Typefaces

A font is a graphical representation of text characters in a specific size or design. A typeface contains a set of fonts with varying weights, widths, and styles.

Color

Text colors affect the mood of the copy while also reflecting your brand.

Hierarchy

Hierarchy can be created by size, color, contrast, position, and weight, as seen with article headlines, subheadings, and body text, for example. The text hierarchy differentiates which text is most important.

Consistency

Keep within a small range of fonts, otherwise, it can look messy. A consistent font helps readers organize information and understand it well.

White Space

The empty space surrounding the text can be used purposefully to make the text more legible. Give the text enough space so the main message shines through without looking crowded.

Typography in Video Ads

With most social media platforms using a sound-off approach for playable ads, typography has become a critical tool for advertising. Since marketers can’t always rely on sound to stand out in users’ feeds, the role of text in video ads is of increasing importance.

Why Use Creative Typography in Advertising?

User Experience

Text is a vital component of advertising, but can often feel laborious for the eye to peruse and can lead to decreased engagement. Using creative typography is a good way to clearly communicate your message in writing, without the viewer feeling the text weighs heavy on the eyes.

Viewer Attention

Typography plays a dual role in advertising. The clever combination of visual and verbal elements makes it an efficient form of marketing. It can be the difference between taking a fleeting glance and stopping to take a longer look at the ad; initially, the reader’s eye is stimulated by the visual image, then challenged to pay closer attention to what the text is really trying to communicate. In this way, typography makes marketing campaigns more memorable and more likely to convert.

Sets the Tone

Typography is a highly-effective technique to set the mood for ad campaigns. It can add a dimension to a phrase, or place an impact on a particular word that you want to bring the audience’s attention to. With masterful placement and style of text, this medium is powerful enough to elicit emotions in your viewer and allow them to find depth beyond the words they are reading. Creative typography can emulate the tone of the word or sentence like visual onomatopoeia and greatly affects the user’s perception of the content.

Brand Recognition

A company’s advertising material comprises a huge amount of text. The choice of typeface plays a key role in the way the brand is presented and informs the customer of its values. Typography brings the personality of the brand to the design, therefore strong emphasis should be placed on the style. The font, colors, and design should maintain consistency as these elements will serve to distinguish your brand and how it will be recognized.

How and Where to Use Ads with Typography

Typography is a useful tool for increasing engagement with ads. Below, we have broken down the key platforms that are most conducive for this marketing medium and why typography ads would be highly effective there.

Social Media

Typographic ads are a great solution for ‘sound-off’ social platforms because they can quickly convey messaging and stand out against other images and videos that are not played automatically with sound. When strategically placed, styled, and branded within the ad, the text can draw attention without the viewer feeling like they are reading ad copy.

Native Advertising

With the added advantage of matching the style of the text to the platform and target audience, typography makes for great native advertising. By using the color and font native to the platform, the text blends in as part of the ad, allowing the words to be more easily digested and less recognized as advertising copy.

Paid Ad Campaigns

Using the font of your logo reinforces the brand and what it represents. Using the same font in the paid ad campaign will signify to viewers that this ad represents the brand’s values. In this way, viewers identify a common theme and make the subconscious connection between the brand and the message.

Websites

Most readers will skim through text on websites looking for words most relevant to their searches. Typography plays a vital role in creating a visual hierarchy of words through color, font, and size. This order helps readers decipher the most important words in the text and allow the eye to focus on words of higher significance that will lead to a paid conversion.

Trends

What can we expect to see from the world of creative typography? With online services like Adobe fonts and Google fonts,  designers have access to a wider variety of free fonts. Font choice is fast becoming a trend to keep up with as much as filters and sounds. Here are some typographic trends to keep an eye out for:

Heavily-Weighted Fonts and Wide Letter Styles

The bolder the better – perhaps this is a reference to today’s overcrowded social media feed where a brand needs to speak louder and look larger than ever.

Platform-Styled text

The huge impact of social media in recent years has influenced the style of fonts used in marketing and there has been an increasing trend of utilizing the font style of the platform being advertised on.

Handwriting

More than ever, viewers appreciate a human connection and relate well to added emotion and personality to text in ads.

Best Practices

When implementing typography, it is important to make sure it will be suitable for certain platforms. Typographic ads work best on sound-off platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn. However, platforms like YouTube are designed for sound-on videos and will not necessarily benefit from the added infusion of design.

• Be creative with the use of text while matching the design of the platform and needs of the target audience.
• Keep words legible and clear. The goal is to enhance the look of the words while making sure the message is communicated easily.

Good Examples of Typography in Ads

The use of typography in ads is vast. With so much to say and limited time to say it, typography gives power to the text and allows more information to be conveyed in less time. The examples below demonstrate the effectiveness of creative typography in ads.

ASOS & Nike

The collaboration between ASOS & Nike in this video ad is illustrated by way of creative typography. The movement of both brand names emanating from one point concisely portrays the fusion of brands to the audience. The use of color and spacing in the body of text allows the viewer to effortlessly understand the message and serves as a narrative for the remaining video.

Starbucks

In this video ad, Starbucks makes clever use of its witty narrative by displaying the text in the native TikTok style, assisting the viewer to follow the story and stay engaged with the advertisement. This is particularly important on social media platforms where videos are automatically played without sound.

Lazy Oaf

In this video by Lazy Oaf, typography plays a leading role in the ad. Not only does it match the tone and style of the brand, it also serves as a design element of its own that captures the mood of the ad.

To gain attention for their upcoming sale, this Lazy Oaf ad employs several creative typography techniques. The letters, formed as balloons, depict the playful personality, which is unique to the brand. With the contrast of colors and movement, the ad is easily caught by the eye.

Billie

In this video, creative typography is key in giving over a cool ‘00s vibe, harkening to the old-school internet days.

Billie successfully added a tone of voice to the text with the simple use of italics, indicating that the brand is a game changer in the world of beauty products. In turn, the added pause created by the typography gives extra impact and focus to the text that follows.

FAQ

Why is typography important in graphic design for ads?

Due to the ‘sound off’ experience on certain social media platforms, creative typography plays a highly important role in video ads when it comes to gaining the attention of the viewer.

What does typography mean in graphic design?

Typography in graphic design refers to the different text design elements such as font, sizing, spacing, and color.

How can I use typography in ads?

Creative typography is an excellent way to transform simple copy into a useful marketing technique. By adding design to the words in the ad, it reinforces brand recognition, enhances storytelling capabilities, and creates a thumb-stopping effect.

Conclusion

By infusing creative flair into your text, the words are transformed into a powerful tool for portraying ideas and influencing the viewer’s perception. Typography plays a vital part in graphic design and we see social media having a big impact on the style of fonts employed in advertising.

Create an amazing typographic ad of your own! Get in touch with the yellowHEAD Creative Studio by clicking here.