Top 15 Must-follow Creative Typography Trends of 2023

Design plays a significant role in shaping the world around us. It can influence our emotions, behavior, and perception of the world. It also significantly shapes our daily lives, from the products we buy to the websites we visit. Good graphic design can communicate complex information and a brand’s identity clearly and concisely, establish a visual language, enhance user experience, connect emotionally with users, and make content more engaging and visually appealing.

Overall, graphic design is vital in shaping the world, making it an essential aspect of modern society. A vital element of a good design is typography – the arrangement of type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing. According to a study, good typography can increase reading speed by up to 35%, and 67% of consumers consider font choice when engaging with brands.

Another study found that using appropriate typography can increase user engagement by up to 200%. Since typographies significantly impact the effectiveness and appeal of visual communication, designers must carefully consider typography to ensure that the text is legible, readable, and visually appealing and effectively communicates the intended message.

But with numerous typography styles and variations that exist, not forgetting the growing trends in typography design, it can be a lot more confusing for designers to decide on the best typography to work with and the trends to follow. In this blog post, you will learn what typography means, why you need the right typography styles, the top 10 fonts in 2023, and 15 top typography trends to follow in 2023.

What is Typography?

Typography is an essential element of design that involves the arrangement of type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing. It plays a vital role in visual communication and can significantly impact how people perceive and understand a message.

Typography involves the selection of typefaces, font sizes, line spacing, and letter spacing to create visually appealing and legible text. Typography can help create a visual hierarchy and convey meaning and emotion when used effectively. In design, typography can create a brand identity, establish a visual style, and communicate a message.

It can be used in various design mediums, such as print, digital, and interactive media, to convey information and enhance user experience. Some key considerations when working with typography in design include the readability of the text, the contrast between the background and the text, and the use of typography to establish hierarchy and emphasize key messages.

Typography can generally be categorized into four major categories: serif, sans-serif, script, and display. Each of these categories includes various subcategories and styles. Additionally, with the advent of digital typography, new styles, and variations are being developed continuously.

Why Do You Need the Right Typography Styles?

Using the right typography style is essential in communicating your message effectively, establishing a visual identity, and creating a pleasant reading experience for your audience. Below are the crucial reasons why you need to use the proper typography styles:

1. Enhance readability

The right typography styles can improve the readability of your text. For example, a sans-serif font is generally easier to read on digital screens than a serif font. The text’s size, spacing, and line height also affect readability, so choosing the right typography style can make a big difference in how easy it is for people to read and understand your text.

2. Establish tone and personality

The typography you choose can help establish the tone and personality of your brand or design project. Modern and bold typography may convey a sense of innovation and strength, while more classic typography can evoke tradition and elegance. The right typography can give your content a personality and mood that connects with your audience.

3. Convey information hierarchy

Typography can also convey information hierarchy, indicating the relative importance of different parts of your text. It can help readers navigate your content and understand the most important information. For example, you may use a larger and bolder font for headlines and subheadings to make them stand out from the body text.

4. Create visual interest

Different typography styles can help create visual interest and contrast in your design. This can help draw the reader’s eye to different parts of your design, making it more engaging and dynamic.

5. Brand identity

Typography is crucial in establishing and reinforcing brand identity. The right typography can help create a visual identity that distinguishes your brand.

6. Differentiation

With so much content online and offline, it’s essential to differentiate yourself from others. The right typography can help you stand out and create a memorable impression on your audience.

7. Better user experience

Typography can impact the user experience of your website or app, and using the right typography can help improve the overall experience for your audience.

8. Professional appearance

Using the right typography can give your content a professional appearance, which can help build trust with your audience and establish your credibility as a brand or individual.

9. Appealing design

Typography is an important part of design cohesion, ensuring that all elements of your design work together harmoniously. Using typography can help your content stand out and grab your audience’s attention.

Top 10 Web Fonts To Use In 2023

Web typography is the art and technique of arranging various typography or lettering styles on the web. It involves the selection of fonts, typefaces, and other elements of typography to create visually appealing and legible text on websites.

Web typography is important because it affects the readability and accessibility of online content. Factors such as font size, line spacing, and letter spacing can impact how easily users can read and comprehend online text. Additionally, web typography can help to establish a brand identity, convey a specific tone or mood, and create visual interest on a website.

Here are 10 web fonts that you may consider using in 2023, along with a brief explanation of their characteristics:

1. Open Sans

Open sans is a sans-serif font that is clean, modern, and easy to read and designed with an upright stress, open forms, and a neutral yet friendly appearance. It’s a versatile font has excellent legibility characteristics in its letterforms and can be used for various design contexts, including print, websites, and mobile interfaces.

2. Montserrat

A geometric sans-serif font that has a modern, minimalist look. It’s an excellent choice for headings and titles.

3. Roboto

Roboto is another popular sans-serif typeface that has a clean, modern look. It’s a versatile font that can be used for both headings and body text.

4. Lato

Lato is a humanist sans-serif font that has a warm and friendly feel. It’s a good choice for body text as it’s easy to read.

5. Playfair Display

Playfair Display is a serif font that has a classic, elegant look. It’s an excellent choice for headings and titles on websites.

6. Merriweather

Merriweather is another serif font with a classic feel and is easy to read. It’s a good choice for body text on websites.

7. Source Sans Pro

Source Sans Pro is a clean, modern sans-serif font with a simple and elegant feel. It’s a good choice for both headings and body text.

8. Poppins

Poppins is a geometric sans-serif font that has a modern, playful look. It’s an excellent choice for headings and titles.

9. Georgia

Georgia is a serif font that has a classic and elegant feel. It’s a good choice for body text as it’s easy to read.

10. Nunito

Nunito is a sans-serif font that has a rounded and friendly feel. It’s an excellent choice for headings and titles on websites.

15 Must-follow Creative Typography Trends of 2023

Typography is an important element of design, and it significantly impacts how we communicate visually. As we progress down 2023, typography trends continuously evolve, and designers must keep up with the latest trends to create effective designs. In this section, we will discuss the 15 favorite typography trends of 2023.

1. Maxi typography

Maxi typography is a trend involving oversized typography to create a bold and impactful design. This typography trend uses bold and heavy fonts that sometimes bleed off the page and take center stage as a focal point. This trend is expected to continue in 2023, with designers experimenting with different fonts and colors to create visually striking designs.

You can create interest and intrigue with the font becoming hidden by other parts of the design. Importantly, you must ensure that the maxi typography is always flat – with zero gradients and no 3D element.

2. 3D Typography

3D typography is a trend that involves creating typography that appears to be three-dimensional. This trend has grown in popularity recently and is expected to continue in 2023. Three-dimensional typography adds a realistic effect to the type, making typography on a screen or printed element “lift” off the canvas for a look that’s almost like a sign.

Like most typography styles, 3D typography has different styles ranging from big and bold to featuring more script or bubble design, color, or dramatic effect.

Characteristics of 3D Type

The characteristics of and techniques used to create 3D typography include:

• Adding textures
• Titling
• Animation
• Use of shadows
• Use of sharp text on a blurred background
• Changes in perspective for letters, such as some being upright and some lying down
• Embossing or lighting changes
• The distinct layering of text versus background
• Photographing objects to create text
• Solid long shadows

3. Bold Serifs

Serif fonts are decorative with short projections that many believe help reading speed and overall readability. In recent times, serif fonts have always been a popular choice for typography, but in 2023, we can expect bold serifs to take center stage.

This trend involves using bigger, bolder serif fonts with thicker strokes to create bold, stunning, and impactful designs that grab site visitors’ attention as soon as they land on the page. Popular examples of bold serifs are Bodoni, Spinwerad, Yokawerad Bold, Otama, Abril FatFace Bold, Colus Bold, Mermaid Bold, Bambi Bold, John Hancock CP Bold, Whitin Bold, and Sling Bold font.

4. Mixed Fonts

Although the mixed typography or font trend started in the world of hipsters, it has since merged with the mainstream and is now widely applied to all forms of design. Mixed fonts are a trend that involves using multiple fonts in a design. This trend combines all kinds of fonts – curvaceous script fonts, handwritten fonts, Egyptian, and sans serif – to create a beautiful mixed typography.

Its core tenet is selectivity. Keep it clean, pick two or three fonts that go well together, and, importantly, unify your typographical decisions with some shared context. Unifying your fonts with shared context will help people easily perceive and understand the content.

In 2023, designers will continue experimenting with different font combinations to create unique and interesting designs.

5. Colorful Typography

Colorful typography trend includes using colored text-type fonts in a design or simply using bold and bright colors to create attractive typography. They mostly come in multiple colors, hues, textures, and transparencies and can sometimes include bitmap images, vectorial shapes, or both.

This typography trend represents a monumental evolution in digital typography and can be applied to all kinds of texts, characters, icons, or emojis. Colorful typography can be used in any context that allows display typeface. They were initially designed for headlines and statements of banners for rallies and protests before eventually developing into a whole family of weights and styles.

This trend is expected to continue in 2023, with designers using various colors to create visually striking designs.

6. Handwritten Typography

Handwritten typography is a trend designed to match the unique appeal of human writing. Unlike serif and sans serif typefaces, handwritten typography is more personal and designed to add a personal touch to digital designs. As one of the best font trends in 2023, many designers use handwriting fonts to bring a touch of personality and authenticity to a brand.

Using a handwritten style makes your design appear friendlier, informal, or more approachable than competing brands. Handwritten typography is a trend that involves using typography that appears to be hand-drawn. This trend has grown in popularity recently and is expected to continue in 2023.

7. Outline Typography

Outline typography involves using outlined fonts in a typography design to create a bold and impactful design. This typography trend is mostly used in bold Sans serif or serif bold fonts to create powerful feelings and mix fonts with transparency to contrast with a modern style to direct the viewer’s attention to some essential text part.

It is important to note that outline fonts have letters with a separate outer line or several lines, or the inside of the letter may be completely hollow. This trend is expected to continue in 2023, with designers experimenting with different outline styles to create unique, powerful design compositions using transparency and merging the font with other design layout elements.

8. Kinetic Typography

Kinetic typography is a popular graphic design trend used for many years to animate the title sequence for cinema. It is an animation technique that uses moving text to create a form of animated typography that helps you capture attention, set a tone, and entertain the audience. It’s now widely used in mobile apps, web projects, commercials, and music videos to add a touch of artistry to a design and make it more impactful.

However, in present times, designers now use kinetic typography to reduce their website bounce rate and animate video content. Hence, it is not surprising that kinetic typography is expected to dominate the graphic design field in 2023. Additionally, designers are expected to get more creative with this technique to create strong narratives for brands and products.

9. Evolved Brutalism Typography

Brutalist typography trend is an architectural style or art characterized by deliberate plainness, crudity, or violence of imagery. With harsh colors, straight lines and a non-traditional layout, the brutalist font looks unpolished and purposely raw.

Over the past years, many brands and graphic designers have used brutalist styles on their poster design projects and brand identity designs. This typography design trend is mostly used by brands that want to give a disruptive feeling with new ideas, change the perception of their sector and differentiate themselves from their competitors. Evolved brutalism is one of the latest typography trends we expect to see more in 2033.

10. Text Layering With Other Design Elements

This typography trend involves text layering with over-design elements and text blending with background images. It dominated the design space in past years and is expected to grow better in 2023. In 2023, we are more likely to see more websites and brands merge text with other elements, such as images or illustrations.

Although no particular font is required for this trend, brands and graphic designers use this typography style to create more immersive storytelling as the text blends with images, creating a positive connection between what you read and see.

11. Variable typography

The variable typography trend is a design style involving typefaces that can adapt and change depending on the context and the device being used to view the design. Variable fonts are designed to have multiple variations of weight, width, slant, and other properties that can be controlled dynamically using CSS or other web technologies. This allows designers to create more responsive and adaptable designs that look great on any screen size or resolution.

Variable typography has been made possible by advancements in web technology and the development of OpenType font formats that support variable font features. With variable fonts, designers can create designs optimized for different screen sizes and resolutions without creating multiple versions of the same font.

12. Rounded Sans Serifs

The rounded sans serif typography trend is a design style that features a sans-serif typeface with rounded corners and edges. This trend has become increasingly popular in recent years as designers look for ways to create modern and friendly designs that are easy on the eyes.

Rounded sans-serif typefaces are often used in branding and marketing materials, such as logos, social media graphics, and packaging. They are also commonly used in user interfaces and web design, where they help to create a clean and approachable look and feel.

13. Solid Shadow Typography Trends

Solid shadow typography is a design trend involving typography with solid, block-like shadows that appear to be a part of the letterform itself. This technique adds depth and dimension to the typography and can create a striking visual effect.

The solid shadow technique can be achieved using a variety of methods, including layering multiple copies of the typeface on top of one another, creating a separate layer for the shadow and manipulating the opacity or blend modes, or using a plugin or filter in design software that generates the effect automatically.

14. Svelte Serif Typography Trend

The Svelte Serif typography trend is a design style that features a serif typeface with a modern, minimalist twist. Svelte Serif is a typeface style characterized by thin and elegant serifs, sharp angles, and a pared-down aesthetic.

The Svelte Serif trend emerged as a response to the popularity of sans-serif typefaces in contemporary design. Designers looked for ways to add more personality and character to their typography while maintaining a clean and modern look. Svelte Serif typefaces are often used in branding and editorial design, as they balance tradition and modernity.

15. Distorted Fonts

The distorted typography trend is a design style that involves the intentional distortion, manipulation, and abstraction of typography to create a bold and eye-catching effect. This style is characterized by unconventional shapes, colors, and textures that challenge traditional notions of legibility and readability.

Distorted typography is often used in experimental design, as well as in music, fashion, and youth culture. It is a style that encourages creativity and self-expression, and it often conveys a sense of rebellion and nonconformity. Distorted typography can be achieved using various techniques, such as stretching, warping, twisting, or glitching the letterforms.

Designers may also use creative layering, color overlays, or textures to create an abstract and textured effect.

Conclusion

Typography is an essential element of design that plays a critical role in communicating messages, conveying emotions, and establishing brand identities. As design trends evolve, so too do the trends in typography. From the elegant and refined Svelte Serif trend to the bold and experimental Distorted Typography trend, typography styles continue to evolve and push the boundaries of what is possible in design.

In 2023, designers will continue exploring the possibilities of variable typography, experimenting with bold and eye-catching solid shadow typography and incorporating playful and versatile rounded sans-serif typography. Overall, typography trends offer designers a range of options and styles to choose from, allowing them to create unique and visually engaging designs that capture the attention of their target audience.

As technology continues to evolve, typography trends will likely continue to evolve and innovate, offering new possibilities for designers to explore and experiment with in the years to come.