Never been on my radar but you can bet it does broaden the scope one can use for branding purposes. In my career, I have several of them I use daily. We live in a world where new technology continues to bring us tools to make things easier. What better way to firmly solidify your place in the marketplace than with a brand that contains your own font?ĭon’t worry, you won’t be seeing anything named Marino Sans anytime soon but it really does open up the possibilities. As a designer I understand the economics behind it but it does give me food for thought. I still find it amazing that such an iconic brand as Netflix chose to create their own font.
It’s the curve that appears on the top of the letter ‘t’ which was first developed to honour the logo of the brand of movie lens used in the 1950’s and 60’s known by the name of CinemaScope.
A nod to the original shows up clearly in the Netflix Sans font.
The company was established in 1997 and the original logo got a slight update in 2014. It is a commonly used font in the entertainment industry so clearly a rebranding with a new, never-before-seen font set Netflix apart from the other entertainment industry brands. By the way, the font that Netflix had been using was called Gotham. He laid it out saying that font licensing “can get quite expensive” and so being able to create an actual ownable and unique font basically eliminated that cost. Noah Nathan, the design lead behind the Netflix Sans confirms this in an interview that appeared in Ad Week. Using certain fonts costs money in the form of royalties and well, you don’t have to pay to use a font you developed for your own brand. It grew from the existing logo used in the Netflix branding and it is truly economical. The inspiration behind Netflix Sans was multi-leveled. When there is no serif on a font, it is considers sans serif (no serif). It is a san serif font and for those who do not know what serif is, it’s the fancy little curls and knobs that appear on classic fonts. They developed their bespoke font and even named it Netflix Sans. That is precisely what the marketing team at the online entertainment streaming company Netflix did.
What I have never really considered is ‘inventing’ a brand new font.
Because fonts have a huge role to play in branding, the right choice has to take careful consideration and I have had times where I have gone through several choices before hitting on the right combination. I have some personal favourites and I have some I would use just sparingly. As a Designer I spend a lot of time working with fonts.