How to pair fonts like a design professional

How to pair fonts like a design professional

Written by:
Carolina Marquez

Feb 08, 2015
Featured

Today we'll bring you five tips to help you use and combine your fonts.

As a designer and typography enthusiast, I see typographical disasters everywhere.  Perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit but sometimes it's not that difficult to go for something simple and clean; instead beginner and novice users often choose the hard path and complicate the designs including the font choices.   As previously covered in the minimalist design tips article,  you want to apply the principle of "Less is More".

This rule can be applied to all types of rich content including when you create presentations, infographics and posts.

It's very easy to get mixed up in font choices these days.  In the past you often had access to a limited number of fonts in programs such as Word or Powerpoint but in the recent years with advent of Google fonts library (among others)  which has an ever growing library of over 550 fonts, and easy to use content creation programs such as Visme which gives you 100+ fonts to choose from it's easy to make the wrong choices when selecting the right combination of font styles.

make your text look beautiful with visme

Let's look at five easy to follow tips; consider them the next time you create your next piece of content:


Combining Serif fonts


The first tip is about using Serif as part of a font combination.  San Serif fonts such as Arial or Verdana are clean fonts with no edges, while Serif fonts (such as Garamond or Time New Roman) letters contain edges (or teeth).

You know the saying opposites attract?  It can be applied here;  just don't over due it.  For example use it in a slogan or header; but not in body of content.

Serif

Similar Fonts


Following on the last tip,  what you want to avoid doing is to combine two similar fonts.  The reason is when two fonts closely resemble each other yet are slightly different,  your eye has a difficult time adjusting to each font style when positioned close to each other.

similar

Contrast


Another option is contrast. Opposites attract, and in case of fonts, they can too. Using two completely different fonts across the strength spectrum can provide a unique style that will improve your design as well as allow you to emphasize one word/phrase over another.

Contrast

Thickness


And something similar happens with thicknesses.  Different fonts have varying levels of thickness.  And most fonts are available in regular and bold.

That's why sometimes it is better to choose a font with family options, because you will have a wider range of possibilities.  For example in example below I'm emphasizing certain words by using the same font in bold over regular.

Thickness

Number of Fonts


Another recommendation is to use two fonts.  You will create a close bond with each and maintain a balance across your content.

But if absolutely necessary you can use a third font style such as the example below:

Number

What are your thoughts? Any other font pairing tips you'd like to share?

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    About the Author

    Caro is a internet marketer, blogger and a design enthusiast. She joined the Visme.co team on 2014, and she's been working with the tool ever since! She likes to share tips and tricks to make design and marketing easy and reachable for anyone!