Comments on: Question: Font Combinations Book?

By: Douglas Bonneville

Douglas Bonneville — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:11:46 +0000

The Big Book of Font Combinations project has been updated.

Jump over to this article for a preview:

http://bonfx.com/font-combinations-book-free-preview-of-font-pairings-template/

By: Douglas Bonneville

Douglas Bonneville — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:42:03 +0000

The fonts I’m using for the book and iPhone app are a core set – no fluff, all quality stuff. There are only a handful, very small handful, of fonts I’d add to my own core for any practical usage. There is always the oddball project that benefits from a strange one off distressed font. But by and large, out of the hundreds of typefaces (which translates into who knows how many thousand individual fonts) I routinely use less than 20 I’d say. So yes, I’ll focus on the essentials. There are some designers that don’t use more than about 10 typefaces for their whole career. Less is more in many cases!

By: Kevin Cullis

Kevin Cullis — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:15:57 +0000

How about font type essentials, like music essentials from iTunes. Also, how about discussing the quality of fonts and where to steer away from buying bad quality stuff.

By: Douglas Bonneville

Douglas Bonneville — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 06:16:13 +0000

Hi John: I’m personally very intrigued by the “bad examples” idea. I recently did a post, the first of a series, focusing on bad typography examples, from humorous to serious. The idea of examples by genre is one I had not considered. I like that a lot! Funny, I get type size questions about business cards more than any other pieces I have worked on over the years…

By: John S. Hall

John S. Hall — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:55:28 +0000

Hi Doug,

I think a font combination book would be extremely helpful, especially one that includes more current / up-to-date fonts in addition to the tried ‘n’ true classics. (In other words, fonts from companies like FontFont, FontShop, Emigre, P22, etc., as well as Adobe’s library and so on.)

And I think that “bad examples” would be very helpful to designers of all levels — a picture being worth a thousand words and all that.

I would say that type examples for printed newsletters / newspapers would be a definite, and so should type examples for letterhead / envelopes / business cards, and for menus too.

There should also be type examples for web sites / blogs / electronic media as well, IMHO.

Cheers,
John the Fontaholic

By: Douglas Bonneville

Douglas Bonneville — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:12:45 +0000

Hi Laura: I’m so glad you found the graphics useful. I have more font combination articles and tutorials in the works so keep tabs on the blog, if you’d like! Thanks for stopping by!

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:27:14 +0000

Hi, I stumbled across your blog and found this post especially interesting. I’m a design student and feel like I’m randomly combining typefaces often. I know serif with sans serif but more than that it’s guesswork. So this is a good idea! I like to see examples WITH explanation.