http://bit.ly/dklncO

Every typeface mentioned above is in the app, and you can recreate all of the typeface combinations easily just by swiping the header or body. All said, this version has about 2000 font combinations you can make. Not all will be workable of course, but that is the fun.

Frutiger + Bembo = sweet

Lithos + Trajan = utter disaster

Take a gander if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch. The preview page link above has some nice big screenshots and complete description.

It’s my first iPhone app too. It was a very interesting process I’ll make a post about in the coming weeks.

I’m hard at work at the iPad version which will be huge on screen.

Thanks!

I’m glad that I could be of help you and your superlative combinations!

Happy Holidays,
John the Fontaholic

I have warm fuzzies, always, for Palatino, but it wasn’t in the list of 19 fonts I decided to work with. I believe though it was in the top 40 I started working with. How could it not be? However, you could swap in Palatino for any other of the classic serifs in the list for similar results. I have since found other “rules” that other people came up with that tried to tie x-heights of serif / sans serif combos, but there are so many other factors including units per letter, leading, kerning, overall font sizes, etc, which effectively means you could find a sweet spot among spots for pretty much any 2 fonts with enough tweaking. Not that they would all be equally pretty, but even with 2 utterly diametrically opposed typefaces, you could theoretically find the best combination among a series of bad ones, after playing with all the variables at your disposal.

The only combination I would suggest — and one I’ve used with good results — is Clarendon Bold as the headline with Franklin Gothic as the body copy.

Also — no combos with Palatino?

Cheers,
John the Fontaholic

Example: Picture this – Gotham Extra Narrow Bold paired Sabon. You could make that work quite nicely. I know we have some Gotham and Sabon fans reading this…

My favorite reaction I’ve seen so far: “Futura and Bodoni…no, no, no!” But remember the chart is meant to ask the question, not necessarily be the answer!!

This post, about a month old, finally caught wind in the last few days thanks to a few key tweets from Smashing Magazine and Jacob Cass. It will pass 10,000 views by weeks end according to how it’s tracked the last couple days. I think the big value-add in all the tweets and other trackbacks was that there was graphics and a PDF download. Several bloggers grabbed the big jpg and pasted it as-is into their posts – makes for some nice swiss-ish eye candy.

So the big lesson I learned from this post is don’t cut corners, use lot’s of visuals, make it interesting, word hard, and the web will figure out that the post should do well!

Thanks!

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/how-to-become-a-smashing-magazine-author/

As for your teacher and boss who say that serifs and sans-serifs shouldn’t be mixed, I would say that they can be mixed if you mix them right. You certainly can mix them wrong to disastrous results. The one rule you have to stick to is create contrast (not too much) and not concord. Put Bodoni and Clarendon together to see what I mean. There is no way to make those look good. Or try Aksidenz Grotesk and News Gothic to really see something hideous that at first glance doesn’t seem wrong. The more you look at that combination the more it looks bad, especially if you get similar weights and point sizes.

Too much contrast between faces also produces gag-inducing results. Just do this one in your head: Bodoni Poster with Helvetica Extra Light Condensed. Make sure you aren’t drinking or eating anything .

Big resources are time intensive but there is a direct correlation to the amount of original work and the amount residual traffic you get from an article! Man, if I only had 100 hours a day…

I’m curious what are a few serif fonts you would recommend used with Gotham?

thanks again for the article. Great stuff!

Thanks,

Douglas