Characters Are the New Typography

Ten years ago, a custom typeface was the signal of a serious brand. Today, custom typefaces are expected, available, and ubiquitous. The new differentiator is a level up: characters. Here is why the brands making the next move are investing in mascots the way the last generation invested in type.

Typography was the last differentiator

For most of the last decade, a custom typeface was one of the clearest signals that a brand was taking itself seriously. Airbnb's Cereal, Uber's Move, Netflix's Sans, Spotify's Mix, Intel's Clear. Custom typography said this brand has scale, confidence, and a long-term plan.

That signal is gone. Custom type is now a commodity. Every mid-sized brand has one. Google Fonts has thousands. The tools to commission a typeface have collapsed in cost and timeline. What used to be a statement is now a baseline.

Brands need the next level

When every brand has a custom typeface, custom typefaces stop differentiating. The brand that wants to stand out has to do the next thing up. That next thing is a custom character. A mascot. A face.

Characters are harder to build than typefaces. They require strategy, personality, systems, and ongoing maintenance. That difficulty is exactly why they are valuable. You cannot buy a custom character on a marketplace. You cannot generate one from a prompt. The brands that invest in one are the brands that are separating themselves.

When everyone has a custom typeface, the next differentiator is a custom character.

Why characters hold up

Typography is visual. Characters are narrative. Typography can signal a brand's taste. A character signals a brand's point of view. Taste can be copied. Point of view is much harder to copy because it is tied to personality and behavior, not just form.

This is why mascots will not commoditize the way typefaces did. Even when the tools to sketch characters improve, the thinking behind a good character — who is this, what do they believe, how do they behave — will stay expensive and stay rare. The moat is the strategy, not the drawing.

The pattern that keeps repeating

Every generation of branding has a differentiator that starts as elite and ends as a baseline. In the 90s it was a sophisticated logo system. In the 2000s it was a cohesive color palette. In the 2010s it was custom typography. In the 2020s it is characters.

Brands that recognize the pattern and move early get a decade of differentiation. Brands that wait for the baseline to shift get a decade of looking like everyone else.

The opening

Right now, in almost every category, only a minority of brands have committed to a real character. That means there is still space to be the one in the category who did. In five years, that window will close the same way the custom typography window closed.

If you are building a brand that has to still feel distinct a decade from now, the time to invest in a character is before everyone else does.

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