BonFX

Typography & Graphic Design Blog

  • Blog
  • Font Combinations
  • Books
    • The Preposterously Huge Book of Google Font Combinations
    • The Big Book of Font Combinations (Classic Fonts Edition)
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Art / Art House Co-Op’s “The Sketchbook Project” Moleskine sketches, pages 12-13

The BonFX Letter

One good pairing.
Every Tuesday.

2-minute read · free

This week — no. 14

Quiet authority

Merriweather sets the tone in one line. Lato stays out of the way and lets it.

MERRIWEATHER 700  +  LATO 400

A font specimen, a pairing that works, and one line on why it works. That is the whole email.

Free. One click to unsubscribe. No sharing, ever.

Art House Co-Op’s “The Sketchbook Project” Moleskine sketches, pages 12-13

October 22, 2009 by Douglas Bonneville

For pages 12-13 of my Art House Co-Op “Sketchbook Project” Moleskine, I wanted to do a simple exercise using quasi-isometric shapes. The inclusion of Blackletter type is just totally random. I drew the substructure in pencil and did the black and white work with a Micron .01. The Moleskine paper in this particular book has not grown fond of me nor I of it.
  • The Moleskine paper is prone to bleeding anything and everything. If I open the Moleskine in room lighting, it looks exactly like the scan. I normally use a variety of acid-free, heavy weight white paper with the thick wire binding you see in various sizes at any art store. I have never bled through any of the pages. It must be this particular model.
  • While the flatness and paper texture are wonderful, the Moleskine paper weight is not heavy enough to support really any media without bleeding. Oh well.
  • As my project is entitled, “It’s not easy being green”, we can now add “It’s not easy drawing in a semi-transparent Moleskine notebook”, and hence, I have to draw concepts, if any, very lightly on the even page and focus on only using one side of the odd page.
NOTE: Click for enlargements

Moleskine sketchbook pages 12-13

Blackletter type of the word "Green" with lots of angles surrounding.

Blackletter type of the word "Green" with lots of angles surrounding.

Close up and cross hatching of a few letters and angles.

Close up and cross hatching of a few letters and angles.

About Douglas Bonneville

Douglas has been a graphic designer since 1992, in addition to software developer and author. He is a member of Smashing Magazine's "Panel of Experts" and has contributed to over 100 articles. He is the author of "The Big Book of Font Combinations", loves cats, and plays guitar.

Comments

  1. Maddie says

    October 3, 2010 at 1:50 am

    How many pages does it have total? I’m thinking about doing it…

  2. Douglas Bonneville says

    October 3, 2010 at 1:53 am

    Mine was 40 pages…sounded so few when I got started!

  3. Preeti says

    November 18, 2010 at 6:16 pm

    Hi,
    Great work… Even I’m having trouble with the weight of the paper. Did you find a way to make it work?

  4. Douglas Bonneville says

    November 19, 2010 at 1:06 am

    No, those moleskines are really, really thin. I just ordered a “normal” moleskine for comparison, and the paper must be 4x as thick. The only solution I had towards the end was to draw only on one page and not on the back of that page.

The BonFX Letter

One good pairing.
Every Tuesday.

2-minute read · free

This week — no. 14

Quiet authority

Merriweather sets the tone in one line. Lato stays out of the way and lets it.

MERRIWEATHER 700  +  LATO 400

A font specimen, a pairing that works, and one line on why it works. That is the whole email.

Free. One click to unsubscribe. No sharing, ever.

Free download

The Typography Primer.
Yours, right now.

Adobe's classic · PDF · free

The Typography Primer — book cover

The guide to type that everyone learned from. Subscribe and it is yours instantly. The BonFX Letter follows.

Free. One click to unsubscribe. No sharing, ever.

Still Googling UX terms?

Stop. They're all right here.

UX for Cats book cover

50 terms. Illustrated.
So simple your cat gets it.

Get the Book →

Print & ePub on Amazon

350 font combinations you can steal.

The Big Book of Font Combinations

Every pairing shown in context — web, print, headings, body. Open it, find one that works, use it.

That's it. That's the book.

In print or ePub 40% OFF on Gumroad

Scrolling Google Fonts for "the right one"?

You've been at it for 20 minutes. You'll be at it for 20 more. There are 1,500 fonts in there.

Pocket Handbook of Google Fonts Combinations

We paired every useful Google Font.
7,500 pages. Done.

Get the PDF →

Instant download on Gumroad

Recent Inspirations

  • What Fonts Go With Exo? September 18, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Satisfy? September 17, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Lexend Deca? September 16, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Arvo? September 15, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Crimson Text? September 14, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Pacifico? September 13, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Verdana? September 13, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Red Hat Display? September 12, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Trajan? September 12, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Bitter? September 11, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Minion? September 11, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Space Grotesk? September 10, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Myriad? September 10, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Cabin? September 9, 2026
  • What Fonts Go With Sabon? September 9, 2026

About BonFX

Douglas Bonneville has been a graphic designer since 1992 and has written about type here since 2009. BonFX is a blog about typography and design, and the books that came out of it.

  • The Big Book of Font Combinations
  • The Preposterously Huge Book of Google Font Combinations
  • UX for Cats

More about BonFX →

Start Here

  • Font Combinations: The Complete Guide
  • The 100 Best Fonts
  • 17 Types of Fonts
  • 29 Principles for Great Font Combinations
  • 23 Really Bad Font Choices
  • 20 Free Google Wedding Font Combinations

Contact

Questions about the books or the site? Contact us.

Follow @dbonneville on X.

The BonFX Letter: one good pairing every Tuesday, free. The signup is in the sidebar of every page.

Copyright © 2026 · BonFX

  • Blog
  • Font Combinations
  • Books
    • The Preposterously Huge Book of Google Font Combinations
    • The Big Book of Font Combinations (Classic Fonts Edition)
  • Contact