Whether you use Google Forms for list-building, market research, internal surveys or something else, the new customisation and branding options let you make it look better as you collect your data.

Font selection

It seems sensible—and it seems it should be simple enough—for Google Forms, and all the other such Google tools to let us pick from the hundreds of typefaces in Google Fonts. So, when Google announced their new customisation options, that’s exactly what we hoped to see.

On checking Google Forms, it’s evident that the typeface options are much more limited. In fact, there’s only four: basic, decorative, formal and playful.

Of course, that’s not even their actual font names. More correctly, they are Roboto, Parisienne, Cormorant Garamond and Patrick Hand. Yes, they are Google Fonts, but it’s only four or the 878 available elsewhere.

Theme & colour

For themes and custom palettes, the new features are really just minor extensions of previously available options.

As well as pre-picked colour schemes, you can now define the colour of your header bar with any Hex code. So, yes, you can now get your exact brand colour there.

Following that, Google lets you pick from four auto-generated shades of the header colour, to serve as the page background. Handy and quick, but inexact for branding pedants.

Forms integrates very well with Google Sheets, but even the new set of customisation options leaves us wanting: is Forms flexible enough for you to use in genuinely important branded communications?

Copy Transmission is a Melbourne-based agency :: Better Brands. Loud & Clear.