As a starting point to typeface pairings, see [1, 2]. A good pairing would be a serif in a more calligraphic style than Helvetica. Helvetica is a modern sans-serif typeface with fewer width variation than a humanist typeface, like serif Garamond. My pe…

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Is that it?

Sincerely,
Kate

I’m a Graphic Design student and I found this list to be very helpful for some typography i’m working on for a client. I’ll probably print it out and put it up on my wall. Like you said, it’s not exhaustive, but it’s a great little way to get the feel for what works well.

Thanks!

Glad you found the site and the list, but more so that you found the list useful!

Great resources. I also installed the iPhone app. Thanks. I also wanted to ask u about an specific problem I am having right now. I am designing a logo for a client and I am using his signature as the main typography. I have to add the word “design” to the composition and I am having a hard time deciding about what typography I should use. His signature looks like an script typeface. I tried several combinations and so far my preference is eurostile and bauhaus. He is a painter and the logo communicate freshness, creativity. Anyway, I will really appreaciate your comments. Thanks in advance for your help.

Ileana

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!