Nowadays, the abundance of fonts comes from people’s creativity in making the most beautiful, professional, and valuable fonts for any need. Today, we can see so many available types of font styles, such as old-style serif, square sans serif, geometric sans serif, formal script, display typefaces, and so much more. All of these have histories dated back from decades to centuries ago, where all of them persisted thanks to their usefulness. One of the most famous of these fonts is brush font, a particular font type with many stylistic derivatives.
In this article, Pollux of Geminorum would like to provide a detailed explanation about brush font, down to its definition, history, psychology, uses, and examples. Without further ado, let’s begin!
Definition
Before we move on, we need to know what brush font is first. Basically speaking, brush font is a type of font that relies on loose and broad brushstrokes that are almost similar to calligraphies. However, the font is even looser and broader than formal calligraphies, which makes the font more flexible for any use.
Because the font is more flexible and malleable than formal calligraphies, many businesses rely on this font to make stylistic logos, headlines, and other visual projects that can support their marketing and brand images.
History
While brush font takes inspiration from historical calligraphy-type typography, the style of the font itself was relatively new. The font arguably earned its inspiration from Brush Script, a type of casual connecting script typeface first designed by Robert E. Smith in 1942. The script shows a particular graphic stroke style that emulates a person’s handwriting in letters, giving the “brush” title.
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Originally famous throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the script inspired other typographers to create other calligraphy and handwriting-styled fonts. In this regard, another font that looked similar to brush font is Mistral, a casual script typeface invented by Roger Excoffon in 1953. The similarity comes from Mistral’s primary stylistic inspiration, including Excoffon’s own handwriting style.
Today, both brush font and Mistral continue to be used by typographers and designers worldwide. The former continues to be diversified thanks to the high demand for artistic and stylistic brush typefaces.
Psychology
For typographers and typography enthusiasts, the psychology behind specific fonts continues to be interesting because they can invoke certain psychological states from everyone. Take sans serif font, for example. From then until now, people usually think of the font as a font that emphasizes a no-nonsense, straightforward, professional, and simplistic attitude. This means that by using sans serif font, its user wants to be taken seriously and professionally, which makes the font very popular for formal uses and occasions, such as report documents, official statements, and similar benefits.
In this regard, brush font is included in the script font type. Generally, this font type is associated with the mindset of creativity, free-spiritedness, elegance, and charm. In case you’re wondering about brands that use this font as their logos, some examples are Cadbury, Coca-Cola, and Instagram. Suppose you take a look at their logos. In that case, they try to invoke a sense of creativity, elegance, and free-spiritedness in their brands that, in turn, hopefully, will attract the interest of the younger and more modern demographic.
As such, typographers keep on inventing new styles of brush font that emulate the font styles from these brands to invoke creative and emotional responses from the customers. Moreover, brush font invokes a sense of casualness that is friendlier and more interesting to the modern audience. Teenagers and young adults are usually the primary demographics of this font. The font induces a sense of familiarity towards the free-spiritedness mindset that is common in these age demographics.
Uses
As previously mentioned, brush typeface is more flexible and has more uses than a typical calligraphy font. While both maintain the same style of handwriting-derived artistry, brush typeface is now more widely used by everyone compared to its predecessor. So, how can we use brush font for different kinds of needs?
Poster
Even in the middle of the digital age, where everything is posted online, posters, either digital or printed, continue to be a popular form of artistic illustration and medium. Posters are regularly used to announce specific events and promote things for a mass audience.
In this regard, they sometimes use brush typeface to attract the younger audience in order to have their attention. From the general assumption that the younger demographic (particularly the young adults) are attracted to things with artistic aesthetics, using the font can work wonders in attracting them.
Headline
A catchy headline can attract people to view or read whatever the headline’s content. For that reason, no matter how well-made or well-researched the content is, if the headline is anything but attractive, chances are people will not be interested unless they are forced to.
As a result, illustrators are racing to make the most attractive and catchy headline in order to bring more people in to be interested. Brush typeface can be used in headlines for posters, brochures, social media posts, and others to convey the illustrators’ sense of impeccable artistry.
Logo
If you use social media applications for long enough, some of them, like Instagram, use brush font as the primary font of their logo. While their application logos usually consist of shapes, some use brush typeface to create a logo for their business’ logo.
Using the font for a business logo can make the customers think that the business is friendly to the younger demographic, accommodating to them, free-spirited, and open to change. When used accordingly, the logo based on the brush typeface would attract customers and potential job seekers looking to work in dynamic, accommodating, and forward-looking companies.
Brochure
Brochures that are well-designed, persuasive, and attractive can make people interested in any kind of content in these brochures. Take the example of brochures about musical concerts and art shows. These two events usually use brush typeface to embody the artistry commonly seen in these shows.
Nowadays, musical concerts are primarily dominated by young adults who are willing to spend their free time watching them. To gain their interest far and wide, event organizers (EO) utilize brush typeface in their brochures just to attract the attention of this particular demographic.
With how illustrators can be very creative in designing attractive brochures for these events, the font will continue seeing usage everywhere.
Social media post
Making social media posts that stand out and are attractive amidst the abundance of posts in every second and minute can be extremely tiring. As a result, copywriters and illustrators in many companies need to think of the best social media posts to increase traffic to their respective companies.
To counter this issue, you can use suitable fonts and colors for posts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and others are extremely important to keep the viewers engaged. These posts can take form from simple photos and designs to intricate videos about certain products and services from these companies.
Since most social media users are people from teenagers to adults, the use of brush font is extremely important to gain their attention.
Marketing
Any and all marketing schemes need to be consistent and attractive enough so that people will always be motivated to buy certain products and use services from a company. To that end, a suitable marketing scheme needs to be done to keep them in line.
Attracting youngsters who are in the middle of the soul-searching process using marketing that uses brush typeface can be a good answer. As the typeface is not overly formal and “boring”, people can be more inclined to enjoy the aesthetics of the marketing that uses this typeface.
Examples
Now that we’ve seen how the font can be used for so many purposes, it’s time for us to know some types of brush font that we can use. As a reliable and trusted typography website, Pollux of Geminorum has several examples of fonts that are beautiful to look at and highly reliable.
What are the examples of this font?
Richard Benoitt
The first example in this list of examples of brush fonts is Richard Benoitt by the typographers of Pollux of Geminorum. After looking at the font for the first time, there is an unmistakable sense of modernism combined with the elegance of old-school fonts.
The font’s artistic excellence is further reinforced with the elegant curves and well-designed ligatures, making the font look similar to a person’s handwriting. Commonly, people use this font to make headlines or logos of coffee shop joints popular with young adults.
Warrington
Do you like fonts that look “flowing” based on their curves and shapes? Then Warrington is the correct font for you. While the aesthetics of the font cannot be doubted, it is the elegance of the font that makes people motivated to use the font for multiple purposes.
The font is PUA-encoded, which allows everyone to access the font’s glyphs and swashes without any hassle. The font is famous for many purposes, such as T-shirts, cup writings, coffee powder packs by independent producers, book covers, and many more.
Bryan Letter
While the font may seem “looser” than most examples in this list, it nonetheless does not diminish the font’s elegance and beauty a single bit. In fact, the font looks somewhat similar to the origins of the brush typeface itself.
Not only looking classic thanks to its primary inspiration, but the font also looks fresh and modern enough for the contemporary audience. For that reason, the font successfully combines the classic legacy of the typeface with the modernity of our own times.
Luxuriougenics
While the original brush font already looks elegant enough, Luxuriougenics brings that elegance to a whole new level. The font adds luxurious qualities by befitting its name, making the font highly suitable for grand design projects.
Wedding cards, logos, gratitude cards, and other design projects will definitely benefit from this particular font. With its elegant and luxurious feel, anyone can no longer deny the true worth and elegance of this font.
Almada
Flowing is a primary characteristic of a brush typeface, and Almada really embodies that particular quality. Since the font is PUA-encoded, you can access all of the font’s swashes and glyphs for your design projects, which gives them a “flowing” feel in return.
Varied baseline and smooth lines are the primary drawing points of the font, as the font invokes the artistic feeling of a person’s individual handwriting style. The font is suitable for making words in T-shirts, quotes, wedding invitations, and many more.
Danny Brassco
Are you in the mood for a classy brush font? Then consider choosing Danny Brassco for your design projects. Apart from the elegance and beauty aspects of the font, the primary attracting point of the font is the “gentlemanly” feel that makes it unique compared to other examples here.
Its flexibility and neatness make the font a solid choice for designers making design projects with a male demographic as the primary demographic target. Moreover, the font is PUA-encoded, making all of the swashes and glyphs accessible.
Sociogram
Artsy and classy fonts dominate Instagram these days, making Sociogram a solid choice for those who work as designers for Instagram posts. Specifically designed to make Instagram posts, the font feels like a true modern brush font.
Apart from Instagram posts, this brush font is also highly suitable for branding, logo, content creation, wedding invitations, greeting cards, and other designs that combine the classy and modern feel of this particular font.
Conclusion
Finally, we have reached the end of our lengthy explanation about brush font and its intricate details. With this article, we hope that you can understand more about this font and how to use it properly in the near future. Now, if you want to use some examples of this font and other font types as well for your designs, be sure to visit Pollux of Geminorum’s shop here and get yourself the best deal in buying any of them!