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There are many components of a brand identity: logo, color palette, font choice, and the Visual Vocabulary. There’s a lot of information available about the use of logos, colors, and Visual Vocabulary, but not much on the effective use of fonts. So, here’s some information on the creative, practical, and technical aspects of fonts.

Font basics

A font is a set of all the letters in the alphabet, designed with similar characteris

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

tics. This is also known as a typeface.

Fonts are usually designed to include several style variations. This can include styles like light, regular, bold, semibold, ultra bold, and italic. Some fonts also include “Expert” versions, which are fonts that include fractions and mathematical symbols.

Font families are typically packages of fonts that include all of the different versions of a font. Using fonts with large families will gi

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

ve you a wide range of fonts to use in your materials, for variety and emphasis.

There are many basic classifications of fonts. Four of the most common classes of fonts are:

• Serif fonts, which have little "feet," called serifs, at the ends of the lines that make up the letters. Some examples of serif fonts include Times, Palatino, and Garamond. These fonts are more traditional, elegant, and old-fashioned.

• Sans-serif fonts don't

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

have those feet. “Sans serif” means “without serifs.” Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and Helvetica are some of the most common sans-serif fonts. These fonts are more clean and modern.

• Script fonts are calligraphic or cursive fonts. Brush Script and Nuptial Script are two common script fonts.

• Display fonts are decorative and often used for logos or headlines.

There are other types of fonts as well, including handwriting fonts and all-ca

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

s fonts. However, the four listed above are the most common and useful in business communications.

Creative font usage guidelines

Each type of font has certain characteristics that translate into that font’s personality. A font might be serious or light-hearted, traditional or modern, legible or decorative, or any number of other personality traits. The traits of the font that you use in your marketing materials and busines

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

s communications should reflect and enhance your company’s brand.

Your company should have designated fonts to use in the following situations:

• A logo font, which is typically not one of the fonts that come installed on Windows machines: it should be more unique and interesting. Some logos will have two or three different fonts in them. If this is the case, then consider using one of those fonts as the secondary font as well.

• A

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

secondary font, used for headlines, sub-headlines, taglines, special text such as graphics and captions, and decorative text such as pull quotes, which are the large quotes that are used decoratively in articles and documents. This can be the same font as is used in your logo. This is typically an interesting and unique font as well. This may also be used as the font for your contact information in your stationery, depending on its

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

legibility.

• A tertiary font is optional and may be used when the secondary font is not always legible, for mid-length texts such as pull quotes and contact information.

• A serif text font, for lengthy printed documents. Printed materials are more easily read if they are in serif font rather than sans-serif font.

• A sans-serif font, for shorter printed documents and on-screen use. Text on a computer monitor is easier to read in a

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

sans-serif font than in a serif font.

• A website font, which may be the same font as is used as the main sans-serif text font, depending on how that font translates for online viewing.

All of these fonts should have similar or contrasting characteristics. Choosing fonts with similar characteristics will make your fonts match and create consistency throughout your documents. Choosing fonts with contrasting characteristics will build

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

visual texture and interest into your materials. For example, you could pick all thin, sans-serif fonts such as Arial and Frutiger to create a harmonious, matching suite of fonts. Or you could pick fonts with contrasting characteristics to create greater interest, such as using a serif font like Palatino for the headlines and then using a sans-serif font like Verdana for the text.

Each piece of marketing material or document created

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

should have a maximum of three or four families of fonts on them. (A font family includes all of the bold and italic variations of a particular font, so using bold or italic effects does not count as additional fonts.) Using more than three or four fonts is confusing, and it looks unprofessional.

Practical font usage guidelines

Fonts can require special consideration when you send materials to a professional printer for re

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

production, use them on your website, or send Word documents to others. Here are some basics on using fonts and preserving their appearance in these cases.

• In printed materials, it's easier to read long blocks of copy that is set in a serif font. Sans-serif fonts are usually used in print for short blocks of information, like headlines, pull quotes, or bulleted lists.

When sending your materials to be professionally printed, make

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

ure to address your desires regarding the use of fonts. You can either include the fonts with the files you send to the printer (which might be considered a copyright license infringement), rasterize your artwork (convert it to pixels, so the font data is no longer needed), or outline your fonts (creating shapes out of the fonts, an option that’s available in most vector art programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freeha

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

nd), so that they can be printed accurately. Outlining the fonts is the best way to guarantee that your fonts will remain accurate and sharp.

• Online, in websites, emails, and HTML newsletters, sans-serif fonts look the best: they’re clean, clear, and easy to read. There is one other trick to online font use: you have to make sure that you use fonts that will be installed on the computers of people reading your site. Otherwise, your

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

text will appear in the default font selected by their browser, which is often Courier, a very plain font. That limitation does leave you with several fonts to choose from, though, including Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, and Trebuchet MS.

Serif fonts could also be used on websites; however, it’s best to use them in limited quantities, such as for headlines and subheads. Some fonts that are available to use on the web include Times, Time

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

s New Roman, and Georgia.

Another issue that commonly arises with online fonts is the difficulty in controlling the size and appearance of those fonts. Standard font tags in HTML don’t offer precise sizing control and need to be used several times throughout each HTML document, so making changes can be time-consuming. You can use Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, to precisely control the exact size of your fonts and to make site- wide

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

font, size, or color changes with one simple alteration.

• In Word Documents, you also want to make sure that the fonts that you use for the text will be available on the recipient’s computer. Good fonts to use are the standard fonts that come installed on PCs, which include Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Georgia, Palatino, Courier, and Trebuchet MS.

In order to insert a small amount of customized text—such as your logo, tag

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

line, or address information—create an image of that information and to place it in the header and footer of the page.

Another way to preserve the appearance of text is to export your document as a PDF file and send it to the recipient; PDF files embed the fonts into each document so that they can be viewed on any computer and still look right.

Some technical info about font file types

When you purchase fonts to use on your

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

computer, you’ll often be given a choice of buying a Post Script, True Type, or Open Type font. Here is a brief explanation of the characteristics and problems with each of these formats:

• Post Script fonts are considered industry standard and are therefore preferred by professional printers. There is a format of Post Script fonts available for Macintosh computers and another format available for Windows computers; those fonts canno

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

t be shared between Macs and PCs.

• True Type fonts are often found on Windows machines. These fonts do not print as well as Postscript fonts.

• Open Type fonts are the newest type of font. They are cross-platform compatible, but many fonts aren’t yet available in this format.

With this information about the creative, practical, and technical aspects of font usage, we hope that you can make font choices that will enhance your brand

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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