[tavavex]

I didn't know that many brands had their own bespoke fonts. Especially the less prominent players like Colgate or Korean Air. Was this caused by normal font licensing being so restrictive or expensive that they just decided to hire someone to make a font just for them, or design teams insisting that this sans serif that looks almost like all the others (but not quite) is essential to their design?

[russdill]

For most of these fonts, I feel fairly certain if someone gave me a sample I could identify the brand.

[mrweasel]

Remove the name from the font and I'm fairly certain that I'd get none of them, well maybe HP.

E.g. the Klarna Headline is pretty distinct, but I've never seen it before. The four other Klarna fonts are super generic. Also why do they need five different fonts?

Mostly I think these custom fonts are a waste of money. If you ship software that needs to include fonts, and you don't want to pay a license, it makes sense. If you do it because of "corporate identity" it seems pointless.

[russdill]

Different people work differently I suppose. It's true that some of the fonts seem designed to be forgettable, such as Source, Product, Optimistic. But others are, like Netflix, Verizon, Korean Air, HP, and Colgate look heavily branded to me.

[pixl97]

>like Colgate

It's still an 80 billion dollar company in market cap, so there is that.

Also I'm guessing it's so they have another means of attack on knock off products that directly copy them.

[wpm]

I have respect for the design teams that at least just drop the bullshit and say "Yeah Inter is our font, whatever, who cares"