Compelling, simple, and pleasing images showing the fonts in use are preferred by customers. These images lead to a better experience on the site, and usually an increase in font sales for foundries! We arrived at this conclusion through extensive user testing, analysis of site traffic, and based on customer feedback from the Font Purchasing Habits Survey. Images should be considered your primary marketing materials that best display your font in a compelling manner. You’ll notice that a lot of surface area on various pages throughout the site is dedicated to images for these reasons.
Think of these posters as the marketing label or packaging for your font. If you were walking through a store, browsing a website, or reading a magazine, the label, packaging, or visual of a product is what grabs your attention first, then entices you to find out more, and then guides you towards a purchase.
What makes great font images?
Great font marketing images are usually simple in design, with a consistent color scheme, and a consistent theme. Images showing fonts in use on examples, like fictional mockup logos, in mockup ads, branded packaging, or with photography are helpful for customers, because then they can better imagine the fonts in real world situations. You want customers to look at your font and images and think “Wow! I can design something cool If I buy this font.” Remember, fonts are not an end product, but rather tools used to create end products, so you need to help your customers see them this way. Want to see some great examples of successful font imagery? Just check out the Hot New Fonts page.
Additionally, the set of images should all look like they coordinate together and create a brand for the font. When in doubt, use only a handful of colors consistently throughout your images so they all coordinate together. Not only should images visually go together, they should make sense with the font’s name and design. For example, if your font is designed to look very botanical and natural, then consider naming your font something related to nature, using greens and blues in your images, and creating examples of the font used on spa logos, soap bottles, overlaid on pictures of plants, leaves, or water.
Some type designers gravitate toward creating images showing the font in traditional specimen-style layouts, often used by typographers in the past to show font character sets and features, through rows of text examples, in a very flat design, often in black and white. By themselves, they won't be as helpful to customers; Customers can already see fonts in black and white on the website, and type out their own relevant phrases. People really want to see the fonts in use so they can envision them in their own projects. Our marketing team looks for these kinds of images when choosing fonts for marketing newsletters. Font families should always have at least one image that shows their font in use.
A font family that contains practical specimens showing features, includes images showing fonts in use, and contains images that emotive and inspirational is your best bet for success!
Font Image Specifications
Please follow the guidelines below when submitting images:
- PNG format
- 5-15 Images per family
- Image proportions must be a 2:1 ratio. We recommend 2000 x 1000 px for retina screens. Minimum size is 1440 x 720 px.
Things to avoid
We review all font images submitted with new font submissions. We will reject images if they could create a less than great experience for customers on the site.
Your font submission will be rejected if your font images are:
- Stretched
- Blurry
- Pixelated
- Too busy/chaotic/disorganized in design (For example: overlapping patterns, textures, too much text on one image together.)
- Has text that is too small. It's important to not use text that is too small on your images. While you may be designing the images on a large monitor, your customers will be viewing the image smaller, on on the font family page and in search pages. Make sure to keep the text large especially if your font is a display font or a high-contrast font in order not to loose any details.
- Contain misleading content. Make sure your images don't contain any confusing information about your family or the features it provides.
- Contain misspelled words.
- Contain political content, racist, sexist, expletive, or other inappropriate content
- Contain copyrighted products or company names without their permission
- Contain discounts. (Add these images instead in the promotions editor; they’ll automatically disappear from the family page when your discount ends. Read more about promotion images.)