Serif

Serif fonts are known for their traditional, professional look. Businesses that want to convey a sense of tradition and trustworthiness will often use serif fonts, like financial institutions, legal offices, and classic luxury brands.

  • Creative Layouts: Use Illustrator's Type on a Path tool to create dynamic and flowing serif text layouts that follow custom shapes or curves.
  • Character Customization: Customize individual serif characters with the Direct Selection tool to fine-tune details and achieve a polished look.

Sans serif

Sans serif fonts are clean and modern, making them a good choice for minimalist and digital designs. Organizations wanting to come off as friendly, trendy, or contemporary, like lifestyle brands, creative agencies, and technology companies, would use a sans serif font.

  • Modern Layouts: Alignment and distribution tools in Illustrator allow for precise, structured sans serif layouts that enhance visual clarity.
  • Flexible Designs: Explore variable fonts in Illustrator for sans serif typography, giving you control over weight, width, and slant for more flexible designs.

Script

Script fonts look fluid and mimic handwriting. They add a personal and artistic touch to designs. Beauty and luxury brands, the wedding industry, and upscale restaurants frequently use script fonts.

  • Custom Strokes: Use the Brush tool to create custom script-like strokes, giving your typography a more organic, hand-drawn appearance.
  • Manipulating Script Fonts: Convert text to outlines for greater control over script fonts, allowing for detailed adjustments to each letter's shape.

Display

Display fonts are bold and high-impact, perfect for headlines or whenever you want to make a big statement. These fonts are best for short text where the goal is visual impact rather than readability. You’ll frequently find display typography on movie posters, packaging and logos, and event advertising.

  • Dimensional Effects: Use 3D effects in Illustrator to add depth and dimension to your display typography, making it pop off the page.
  • Unique Treatments: Experiment with envelope distortions to reshape and warp display fonts for one-of-a-kind visual treatments that stand out.

Adobe Illustrator provides these tools and more to help you master each typographic style and take your creative vision to the next level.