Manual: Register, Trademark and Copyright Symbols

Registered, trademark and copyright symbols are important graphic communicators. They help establish brand identities and protect creative work from theft or plagiarism. Despite their legal and symbolic power, however, these symbols need to speak softly. Their appropriate use is a small but significant part of good typography

The design and size of registered, trademark, and copyright symbols can vary widely from font to font. This gives you a lot of choices and, for the most part, these symbols mix-and-match well with other fonts. Although many people prefer to use serif symbols with serif fonts and sans serif symbols with sans serif fonts, it is perfectly acceptable (and sometimes preferable) to substitute a clean sans serif symbol for text usage. These tend to be more legible at small sizes and won’t distract from the preceding band or copyright name.

Because the symbols tend to be drawn relatively large, their size often needs to be adjusted so that they are in correct proportion to the copy referenced.

At text sizes, set the trademark and registered symbols a little smaller than half the x-height of the typeface. As text gets larger, the symbols should become proportionately smaller – especially in display copy.

The copyright symbol is treated differently. When it appears before text (such as a company name), the size of the symbol should be somewhere between the x-height and cap height of the text. When the copyright symbol appears before a year, match the symbol size to the size of the first numeral. When using old style figures, match the size of the one, rather than the other, taller numerals.

Trademark and copyright symbols are crucial to protecting intellectual property. They are also symbols that should be used with typographic awareness.

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