The fonts used in the most famous logos and why they were chosen

Why was this font chosen?

According to what the Saffron designers write, this current one has been chosen to "communicate its brand with only a glance" , i.e. being able to immediately communicate that it is YouTube.

And this, being a reference to the Alternate Gothic used previously, strengthens the brand's recognition.

But why was Alternate Gothic chosen?

Obviously I can't know for sure, but I think it was chosen because it's super readable.

It was designed for editorial use in the tiny size of the column titles as well as the huge size of the main titles. And then so that it was readable in every dimension. How YouTube needed it.

What font does Adidas use in its logo?

L' Avant Garde , which in French means avant-garde, is one of the most influential fonts of the 20th century. Created in 1970 by Herb Lubalin (together with Tom Carnase), it was born as the family of fonts built starting from the logotype of their magazine, which was precisely called "Avant Garde" .

The forms of the Avant Garde are very reminiscent of the natural elegance of the Art Decò of the 20s and 30s. While transmitting a vintage effect, it is still able to tell it in an always contemporary way, thanks to its flexibility and naturalness.

In reality, however, the font used in the Adidas logo is not Avant Garde.

Again, it is a proprietary font, AdiHaus. A font inspired, of course, by the Avant Garde but also by the FF Din (one of my absolute favourites).

Why was the Avant Garde/AdiHaus chosen?

The Avant Garde was chosen in 1971 by the designers who worked on the first restyling of the Adidas logo.

It was chosen both because it was a font very similar to the one originally designed in '49, and, I believe, because of its qualities: elegance, naturalness, cleanliness .

What font does Nike use in its logo?

Futura is one of the most important and influential typefaces in the history of graphics.

Designed starting in 1928 by Paul Renner, it is now considered the geometric font par excellence.

And it's also used, among multitudes of applications, for the Nike logo.

In particular, in the Bold Condensed Oblique version.

More notably, in that version but with a few major tweaks regarding skew and kerning (the space between glyphs).

Why the Future?

Because, like the "whisker" of the logo, the chosen font also conveys a message: strength (the bold version), dynamism (the inclination), stability (the geometry of the Futura).

And it conveys, together with the rest of the image, a very specific message in a clear way: Nike is a strong brand, buy Nike and you will be strong too.

What font does Instagram use in its logo?

In reality, Instagram, in its new logo of May 2016, does not use a real font.

Up until that point, the Instagram logotype was made using the Billabong font. It's a 2006 script font, which has nothing special about it , really, except… well, the fact that it's the Instagram logo font.

In 2016, however, there was the very famous rebrand of Instagram (very criticized at the beginning - not by me - but now everyone admits it was fantastic) in which the logo has also changed.

The new logo was created without using any files or fonts. It's simply designed to be the "Instagram" script.

It was designed by Mackey Saturday starting from the Billabong font , so that it was more functional and harmonious than the previous one , while maintaining some characteristic elements. As seen in this animation:

Why this font?

The answer here is simple: because Instagram was born as an application that presented itself as something dynamic, fun, energetic . That font mirrored exactly the type of message you wanted to convey.

What font does LinkedIn use in its logo?

In reality, very little is known about the brand choices of Linkedin. There are no actual designer studios or agencies that have worked on it or various brand manuals.

What is known is that the font used in the logo is definitely Avenir (at least from 2012 onwards, before it was Myriad Pro).

L'Avenir is one of many wonderful fonts designed by the amazing Adrian Frutiger, in 1988.

It is undoubtedly one of the typefaces that I appreciate the most. It is capable of combining the geometric shapes of the sans serifs of the 1920s (such as Futura) with the more natural and flexible forms of the grotesque characters of the late 19th century (such as Akzidenz Grotesk) and of the second post-war period (such as Univers, also by Adrian Frutiger).

Why this font?

Because it inspires respect, professionalism. Exactly what a working network such as Linkedin wants to convey.

Few other typographic choices would be so suitable.

What font does McDonald's use in its logo?

McDonald's has been using for years what is among the most important and today underrated fonts in the history of graphics: Akzidenz Grotesk .

It is an extremely legible, simple, flexible and impactful font.

It was produced by the German foundry H. Berthold AG in 1896 by an unknown maker. The current version available is the one reworked by Günter Gerhard Lange in the 1950s.

Why is it so difficult to recognize it? Well, because it's the foundation upon which some of the most widely used and well-known fonts today were built. Like Helvetica, Univers, Arial, Frutiger, all inspired by the ancestor Akzidenz.

Below you can clearly see why it is so difficult to distinguish it, for example, from Helvetica: you have to go and check the smallest details!

Why exactly this font?

First of all, in my opinion, because it is very beautiful. We cannot discuss this, then, I believe, also because it represents tradition, history. Which at the beginning McDonald's was very interested in telling.

Conclusions

In this article I wanted to talk about the font choices of some of the most famous brands in order to give you creative ideas for choosing a font for your project.

Analyzing what other designers have done before you is essential.

But even more fundamental is trying to understand the reason for certain choices . What did they want to communicate? Why that font instead of another?

Choosing a font is, in fact, a crucial aspect in the process of creating a logo but also in any other aspect of graphic design.