W01 · Prompt With Purpose

Typography decisions are part of what we cover in Workshop 1 — how to brief an AI on your brand, your constraints, and your aesthetic so it can help you make better decisions faster.

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DESIGNTYPOGRAPHYDECISION-MAKING

Outfit was primary school. Here's how we found the right font.

A live audit of four properties, a shortlist of five fonts, and a decision made in under an hour.

When the workshop site launched, the body font was Outfit — a geometric sans-serif that is clean, modern, and completely inoffensive. It was also, as I described it at the time, a little chubby. A little primary school. Fine, but not quite right.

What followed was a live typography audit conducted in conversation with the AI — not a design brief handed off and returned, but a back-and-forth that felt more like working with a thinking partner than using a tool. Here is how it went.

The audit

The first step was understanding what we were actually working with. The AI pulled the fonts from all four properties in the product line and laid them out in a table.

PropertyDisplay / HeadingsBody / UI copyAccent
Workshop siteFrauncesOutfit → Nunito Sans
studio.freelancefolio.ca/aboutFrauncesOutfit → Nunito Sans
Freelance Folio appInterInter
freelancefolio.ca/landingInterInter

The audit made something visible that I had felt but not named: the workshop site and the app were running on completely different type systems, and neither had been chosen by me or with the full product line in mind. Outfit was a placeholder that had become a default.

The shortlist

The AI proposed five alternatives. I eliminated three immediately. That left Nunito Sans and DM Sans — and I needed to see both in action, paired with Fraunces, before I could decide.

Chosen

Nunito Sans

Breathing room, flexible weight range (300–900), true italics. Works across print, screen, and social.

Close second

DM Sans

Style and confidence. The double-storey g is actually more legible at small sizes — but something about it didn't work at body copy sizes.

Eliminated

Plus Jakarta Sans

Corporate. The 't' wasn't right.

Eliminated

Jost

Too architectural. Too opinionated for body copy.

Eliminated

Syne

Best for display only. Not suitable for body copy at caption sizes.

The AI swapped each one live on the site — a one-line change in the CSS — so I could see them in context rather than on a specimen page. This is the part that mattered: not reading about the fonts, but seeing them on my own words, at my own sizes, against my own colours. Let me tell you — the old days of working in Wix would not have provided this kind of instant preview and flexibility, even with a plug-and-play interface.

"Holy crow! I can breathe — it's so much cleaner and easier to read. Love it!!"

That was my reaction to Nunito Sans. DM Sans was next. It had style, but something about it didn't work for me at body copy sizes. When I looked at the full Nunito Sans specimen on Google Fonts — the weight range, the italic cuts, the flexibility across 300 to 900 — the decision was clear.

Before and after

Before — Outfit

Craft & Commerce Series.

Four workshops on the craft and business of freelancing.

Workshop 01 · 3 Hours

After — Nunito Sans

Craft & Commerce Series.

Four workshops on the craft and business of freelancing.

Workshop 01 · 3 Hours

What we confirmed

The final type system for all printed materials, Instagram posts, presentation slides, and workshop resources:

RoleFontSettingGoogle Fonts
Workshop titles, section headers, pull quotesFrauncesWeight 600View →
Body copy, captions, slide notes, form labelsNunito Sans400 regular, 600 semibold for labelsView →

Both Fraunces and Nunito Sans are free on Google Fonts and available in Canva, Figma, and Google Slides. The decision took less than an hour.

What this means for your practice

The lesson here is not about fonts. It is about the difference between deciding in the abstract and deciding in context. Reading about Nunito Sans on a specimen page would not have told me what seeing it on my own site told me in thirty seconds. The AI made it possible to test in context rather than imagine in theory — and that is the right way to use it.

This is also a case study in what a good working brief looks like. I didn't ask the AI to "find me a better font." I told it what I didn't like about Outfit (chubby, primary school), what I needed the font to do (work across print, screen, and social), and what I already had (Fraunces as the display font). The specificity of the brief is what made the shortlist useful.

W01 Prompt With Purpose · W04 Build with Intention

The brief is the work.

This case study is a preview of what we cover in Workshops 1 and 4 — how a well-written brief changes what the AI can do for you, and how to build with intention rather than just iteration.

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