Understanding typography, while essential for any presenter, can be overwhelming. (Check out part one if you missed it!) Choosing the correct font combinations for each project is tricky. Typography classifications help capture the proper mood of your design. Font pairings help differentiate, with the power to distinguish messages as modern or traditional, energetic or serious, casual or corporate. While the possibilities are truly endless, knowing some basic guidelines will give you greater confidence with your next presentation font selection.
Font Classifications/Styles
To begin, let’s classify font styles into four basic categories. While each of these can break out into multiple sub-categories, it’s best to understand the simple distinctions between the main categories first.
Serif – Small decorative strokes that are added to the end of a letter’s main strokes. Serifs improve readability by leading the eye along the line of type
Sans serif – A typeface that does not have serifs. Generally a low-contrast design. Sans serif faces lend a clean, simple appearance to documents..
Script – fonts that have the appearance of hand lettering with a brush, calligraphy pen or pencil.
Decorative – As the name suggests, fonts that are ornamental or decorative. These fonts are not meant to be used for long lines of body text.
Font pairings
Depending on your project, it could make sense to use multiple fonts. Once you have a good understanding of the classifications of fonts, the next step in achieving typographic success is knowing how to use them together–otherwise known as pairing.
When choosing more than one font, your ultimate goals are visual interest and legibility. To help with that, it’s important not to use:
-more than three fonts
-the same font styles (especially script with script)
-display fonts for longer text (i.e. paragraphs/body copy)
-fonts that look similar (distinction is key)
Those are a great place to begin. Here are some more in depth typography rules that may take a little longer to master:
Keep the family together
The easiest way, yet not always the most interesting way to pair fonts is to use variations of the same family. This will ensure consistency, but allow for hierarchical contrast by varying weights, sizes, or styles.
Alternate serif usage
Another simple yet effective way to pair fonts is use a serif with a sans serif. This classic combination almost always works, however you’ll want to make sure to still create contrast by using varying weights and sizes.
Decorative, yet traditional
Pairing a font with strong personality, like a decorative or a script font, with a more classic selection can be another way to create interesting visual contrast. Ensuring that the fonts chosen aren’t too similar to each other is key. For example, script fonts and italic serif fonts typically do not play well together. With all combinations, but especially with decorative and script fonts, you want to make sure you are being consistent with the mood of your brand or message.
Weight matters
Another easy way to achieve a visually interesting pairing with high contrast is to marry a tall narrow font with a squat, chunkier one. As long the fonts convey the intended mood, the varying personalities should complement each other.
We hope this helped you get a solid foundation for typography basics. We’re excited to see what you come up with! Share some of your favorite font pairings in the comments. Need an expert eye to look at how you’re doing? Our design team would be happy to help! Reach out for a free quote today.
