Best Canva Fonts – Top Tips on Choosing and Font Pairing

How to Choose the Right Fonts for Your Canva Designs

If you’re new to Canva, you might be wondering which are the best Canva Fonts to use for your designs. The right font choice is critical for any graphic design whether it’s for a t-shirt, a logo, or for social media graphics

There are hundreds of fonts available in Canva and even more in Canva Pro. So getting the right font choice can be difficult if you don’t have a base knowledge of each font type.

In this blog post, we’ll cover everything you need to know about fonts including:

-What are fonts and why are they important in design?

-The different types of typeface / fonts and when to use them

-How to choose the right font for your Canva designs

-10 of the best fonts to use in Canva

-How to change the font size, color, and style in Canva

-Tips for using fonts in your designs and how to pair fonts

By the end of this post, you’ll be a font expert! Let’s get started.

1. What are Fonts and Why Are They Important in Design? 

Fonts are the different styles of letters, numbers, and symbols that you can use in your designs. They’re important because they can help set the tone of your design and affect how easy it is for people to read your text.

Fonts trigger emotions and feelings in the reader and therefore getting the right font is important so you trigger the right feelings.

It’s important to use the right font for the use case at hand. For example, a fancy script font might be difficult to read if used for large blocks of text but would be perfect for a short heading or slogan.

2. The Different Types of Fonts and When to Use Them 

There are four main types of fonts: serif, sans serif, script, and decorative. Let’s take a look at each one:

Serif fonts

The ones with little feet or tails on the end of each letter (think Times New Roman). They’re generally used for large bodies of text because they’re easy to read. You’ll find this category of font used a lot in printed media like newspapers.

Sans Serif font

These don’t have the little feet (think Arial). They’re generally easy to read on screen and therefore you see them used a lot online. Common in headlines or short blocks of text too because they tend to be more eye-catching than serif fonts.

Script fonts

Script fonts look like they’re written by hand (like Brush Script). They’re often used to highlight key phrases, for logos or invitations because they add a personal touch. As they arent often that readable, its best to use these in smaller blocks of text.

Decorative or Display fonts

Display fonts just what they sound like – they’re designed to be expressive and decorative (like Old English Text). They’re often used sparingly or for small bits of text because they can be difficult to read.

 3. How to Choose the Right Font for Your Canva Designs 

Now that you know the different types of fonts, how do you choose which one is right for your design? Here are some things to keep in mind:

 -If you want people to read large bodies of text, stick with serif or sans serif fonts that are easy on the eyes.

 -If you want people to remember your brand name or slogan, go with a unique font that will make it stand out.

 -If you want people to feel a certain way about your design (for example, romantic or whimsical), pick a font that conveys those emotions.

 -If you want to stand out, think about pairing two contrasting fonts. With fonts opposites really do attract.

 4. 10 of the Best Fonts in Canva 

 Not sure which font to use in your next Canva design? Here are 10 great options:

Finger Paint – a fun font that shows the variety and fun you can find with fonts.

Montserrat – Contemporary but classic font that’s clean and versatile

Apricots– A handwriting cursive font.

Archivo Narrow and Archivo Black– Two fonts from the same Typeface that work well together

Rubik – Comes in lots of variations from Rubik Light to Rubik Black

Noja– Impactful font that looks good at display sizes and in short passages

Libre Baskerville – a web font optimized for bodies of text

Klemer Display – A very popular font in print on demand at the moment.

Lato – Can see a bit corporate but its clean and modern and great for bodies of text.

BEBAS NEUE – An all-caps sans serif font that brings a touch of modern class to text.

5. How To Change The Font Size, Color And Style In Canva 

Now that you know how to choose the right font, let’s talk about how you can customize it in Canva.

There are the basic functions of size, color and font-weight & decoration (italic and underlined) and Canva also includes:

Letter & Line Spacing Tool – Use this tool to adjust the space (increase or decrease) between letters and stacked lines of text.

Effects – Canva offers 9 different Effect Styles that you can easily apply to your text.

Shape – Within the effects section is the extremely popular curve too that allows you to bend your text up or down.

Top Tip: Split your text into two sections and curve one up and one down. This will give a wavy effect that’s extremely popular at the moment.

6. Tips For Using Fonts In Your Designs 

Here are some general tips for using fonts in your designs:

• Less is more – don’t overcrowd your design with too many different fonts or make headlines so big that they take up half the page! Stick with 1-2 main fonts and 2-3 secondary fonts maximum.
• Try different variations of the same font e.g. bold font and light font or italic and non-italic, large and small.
• Test out different combinations – try lots of different combinations until you find something that works well together. Designing with fonts is all about experimentation so have fun with it!
• Have a font that you want to use but it isn’t available in Canva? Don’t worry, Canva enables you to upload it into the tool and use it in your designs.
• Canva Font Pairing – Canva has a significant number of paired fonts ready to go within the design tool that you can choose from, saving you the effort of picking them yourself. There are some great font combinations.
• Use the Chrome Extension ColorFont – this tool identifies any font you find online simply by clicking on it.
• Be consistent in your use of fonts in order to portray a brand identity in your logos or branding or social media posts for example.

Conclusion: 

Whether you’re using free Canva or Canva Pro, there are many fonts within Canva for you to use in your designs. I’ve given some thoughts on some fonts in Canva to check out and how you can use the functionality to take your designs up a level.

Remember to keep things clean and simple by sticking with 1-2 main fonts and 2-3 secondary fonts maximum per design. Have fun experimenting with different combinations until you find something that works well together!

Learn lots more in Canva’s Own Font Knowledge Base