Fonts, colour and brand kits: making text readable and on-brand

Most designs that look amateur fail on type and colour, not layout. Four fonts on one poster, grey text on a photo, a brand colour that changes shade from post to post. A Canva screening often asks you to fix a design like that.

Pairing and sizing fonts

Use two fonts: one for headings and one for body text. Pair fonts that are clearly different, such as a bold sans-serif heading with a plain serif body, rather than two that are almost the same. Create hierarchy with size and weight, not with more fonts: a heading two to three times the body size, a subheading in between, body text large enough to read on a phone. Set line spacing around 1.2 to 1.5 for paragraphs and tighten it slightly for large headings. Keep lines short; around 45 to 75 characters per line reads best. Use text effects such as shadow or outline only to lift text off a busy background, never on body copy.

Worked example: an event poster uses a script font for the title, a different script for the date, and a bold display font for the venue. Replace the three with one bold heading font for the title and one simple sans-serif for everything else, with the date larger than the venue. The eye now goes to the title first.

Colour and contrast

Pick a main colour, a secondary colour and one accent, plus a dark and a light neutral. A common split is about 60 percent dominant, 30 percent secondary, 10 percent accent, with the accent saved for the button or the one line you want noticed. Text must contrast with its background: dark on light or light on dark, never mid-grey on mid-blue. When text sits on a photo, add a semi-transparent dark overlay or a solid colour block behind it. Type the exact hex code into the colour picker; #1E5AA8 and a "close enough" blue are not the same brand.

Brand kits

A brand kit stores the logo files, colour codes and font choices so they are one click away in every design. Set it up once from the company's brand guide, then use only those colours and fonts unless someone with authority approves a change. Second example: a clinic's posts use three slightly different greens made by eye. Adding the one correct green to the kit and replacing the others fixes the whole feed in an afternoon.

Common mistakes and a practice habit

• More than two fonts in one design.
• Body text too small because the design was made at desktop width.
• Low-contrast text on photos.
• Using the accent colour everywhere, so nothing stands out.

Practice habit. Take one poor design a day from any feed. Remake it with two fonts, a five-colour palette and one accent. Compare both versions on your phone at arm's length and note which reads faster.