A DIYer’s Guide to Font Pairing

How to approach font pairing

While there are no hard and fast rules for pairing fonts, it takes more than haphazardly applying typefaces to different (or all) portions of your work. And though you certainly have your favorite fonts, they may not work for every application and every audience. Here are some pro approaches to effective font pairing that DIYers will find helpful while learning to train their eye for typefaces.

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Start with your visual hierarchy

Let your medium be your guide. A page of print has different font needs than a long-scrolling webpage than a PowerPoint slide. When you know where and how you’ll use the fonts you select, you can give each font its own visual job to do inside your layout. Consider whether your layout will include these text elements before you start your font pairing experiments:

• Headlines
• Sub-headlines
• Body copy
• Pull quotes
• Image captions
• Footnotes and end notes

Once you have the lay of your typographical land, you can set about the task of creating harmony and contrast when and where needed to draw your readers’ eyes across, down, and around your work as needed.

Keep it in the same typeface family

Ease into font pairing by working with different fonts within the same typeface family. They’re almost certain to work together and give you an opportunity to focus on experimenting with weight (bold or light), height, and changes to kerning.

Complements welcome

When you expand your font pairing beyond the same typeface categorization or family, you can start by looking for fonts that clearly complement each other. Look for fonts with similar moods or personalities, fonts that tend to exist in similar contexts, or fonts with similar proportions.
Be careful not to pair fonts that are too complementary. Using several slab serif fonts, for example, would likely look like a distracting mistake than a stylistic choice.

Go for contrast but avoid conflict

Just as pairing two fonts that are too similar can look distracting, so too can going too far when it comes to creating contrast. To stay on the safe side, introduce kinds of contrast one at a time. Some ways to work in contrast might include:

• Weight. Bold, thin, and everything in between, a font’s weight can help it offset another font or stand out in meaningful, eye-catching way.
• Height. Try starting with substantially different heights across your fonts—using your visual hierarchy to inform and boost this contrast.
• Width. Again, think kerning. Let your fonts hang loose or tighten them up. Go in one direction, then another, then go in opposite directions across fonts to see what’ll you’ll discover.

Don’t forget the saying “Opposites attract.” This is a great place to put that to the test. A casual, lighthearted script-based font might work well with its opposite, a geometric sans-serif.

Three or less is more

Too much font variety—no matter how well paired—can cause your readers fatigue and confuse viewers as they scan your work. Three fonts are plenty if you’re making a big pairing stretch to challenge yourself. Proceed with caution if you try to incorporate more.

Learning how to pair fonts effectively will add depth to your designs and help the right elements of your text leap off the page. Whether you’re putting together a presentation or creating a visual hierarchy for a website, font pairing is the key to elevating your text into a design element.