Font Pairing Tips

So, you’ve just purchased the Avenir® Next typeface family? Good for you! You’ve made a wise typographic decision. Avenir Next is a large and versatile family that easily meets the needs of many projects. The various weights and proportions within the family complement each other, ensuring no typeface clashes, and provide enough choices to provide different designs for banners, headlines, sub-heads, navigational links and text copy.

For anything but the simplest typographic decisions, however, combining two, and sometimes more, different typeface designs does a better job of defining hierarchy and creating visual interest.

So, what are ideal typeface pairings for Avenir Next? Read the Font Pairings Guidelines over the next few days, and you’ll get an answer to that question about font pairing – and more.

1. How many pairings to a project?

If you need more than one typeface for a particular job, it’s safest and easiest to rely on one large typeface family. The various weights and proportions within the family will complement one another, ensure no typeface clashes, and provide choices for headlines, sub-heads and text copy. Mixing within a typeface family is easy and gives good results.

Combining two or more, different, typeface designs, however, will do a better job of defining hierarchy and creating visual interest. How many different typefaces can be paired successfully? Two large typeface families should provide more than enough fonts for even the most complicated of documents. In some cases, the limit can be pushed to three – if one of them is a display typeface. More than four and you have a circus poster.

2. The Golden Rule of pairing.

There’s a typographic Golden Rule for combining fonts from unrelated families: The greater the difference in type designs, the better the mix. The least risky contrast is a serif and sans serif. Select virtually any sans-serif typeface, combine it with just about any serif design, and you’re in safe territory.

Old style serif typefaces, like Stempel Garamond™ and ITC Legacy® Serif, also pair with just about any font – from a slab serif design, like Egyptian Slate™ to a sturdy sans like FF DIN®.

If you are considering pairing different serif fonts, look to very different typefaces from the four serif classifications. Try an old style typeface like ITC Weidemann® with a neo classical design like Walbaum, or a transitional like Pertetua® with a glyphic like Friz Quadrata™.

Sometimes two faces from similar stylistic categories can be combined if the design and/or weight differences between them are pronounced. For example, the delicate stroke weight of ITC Berkeley Old Style® Book contrasts nicely with the chubby and lively ITC Souvenir Bold®.

3. Think: Counterpoint

Our eyes are drawn to graphic images that are either in harmony or at counterpoint. Visually strong typographic contrasts typically don’t create problems, but when typefaces from different families that look a lot alike are combined, visual dissonance or uneven harmony can occur (think navy socks with black shoes).

What’s the problem with combining similar designs? Our sensibilities seem to require either strong typographic contrast – or none at all. To some degree this has been proven in formal legibility studies. Researchers have found that there is a direct correlation between esthetics and typographic legibility; that typefaces and typographic arrangements which are pleasing to the eye, are also the most legible. Unlike color combinations that can benefit from subtle contrast, typeface changes need to be obvious.

4. Pairing Sans Serif Designs

Pairing sans serif typefaces can be a challenge. When designing with sans serifs, keep in mind that only vastly different styles from these families should be combined on a page. A grotesque sans such as ITC Franklin Gothic™ can work with a geometric sans serif like ITC Avant Garde Gothic® because the two are distinctively different from each other. But typefaces of the sans variety that are similar in design – Helvetica® Now and Univers® Next, for example, almost never work in unison.

Also consider unexpected weight and size pairings of sans serif fonts. A large size headline in Futura® Now Headline Light creates a powerful counterpoint to a pull-quote or sub head set in Clearface Gothic™. Text copy could be set in Futura Now Text Regular – or a just about any serif typeface.

5. Pairing Scripts & Screen Fonts

Script types such as Snell Roundhand® and Gigi™ have such strong personalities they almost invariably conflict and compete for attention when coupled with each other. Otherwise, scripts exist in harmony with nearly all sans serifs, as well as serif typefaces, from the staid Century Schoolbook® to the sophisticated New Velovic® and Avenir® Next families

Changing type size can help create interest and hierarchy, but changing weight does a lot more. Many newer typeface families have a wide range of weights. Good for print projects – typographic subtleties work in hardcopy. Not so much, however, in the digital world. Pixel real estate has a lot to do with how typefaces appear on screen. The light and medium weights of many typefaces provide adequate contrast in print environments but, in digital environments, they may look the same – or virtually the same – weight. You might need to consider a bolder weight as a pair to the light, in on-screen content.