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Great font pairings are essential to great design.
Here are some basic rules to create great font pairings:
It is always safe to find font pairings that complement one another. A great font combination should harmonize, without being too similar or too different.
A font superfamily is a set of fonts designed to work well together. So, using different fonts within the same superfamily is safe. For example, the Lucida superfamily contains the following fonts: Lucida Sans, Lucida Serif, Lucida Typewriter Sans, Lucida Typewriter Serif and Lucida Math.
Two fonts that are too similar will often conflict. However, contrasts, done the right way, brings out the best in each font.
Example: Combining serif with sans serif is a well known combination. A strong superfamily includes both serif and sans serif variations of the same font (e.g. Lucida and Lucida Sans).
One font should be the boss. This establishes a hierarchy for the fonts on your page. This can be achieved by varying the size, weight and color.
No doubt "Georgia" is the boss here:
body {
background-color: black;
font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;
font-size: 16px;
color: gray;
}
h1 {
font-family: Georgia, serif;
font-size: 60px;
color: white;
}
Below, we have shown some popular font pairings that will suit many brands and contexts.
Georgia and Verdana is a classic combination. It also sticks to the web safe font standards.
Helvetica and Garamond is another classic combination that uses web safe fonts.
If you do not want to use standard fonts in HTML, you can use Google Fonts. Google Fonts are free to use, and have more than 1000 fonts to choose from. Below are some popular Google Web Font Pairings.
For a list of all free Google Fonts, visit our How To - Google Fonts Tutorial.