BonFX

What fonts go with Archivo? The useful answer starts with a correction: Archivo is not the condensed face most people picture. Archivo Narrow and Archivo Black are siblings, not the same font, and the plain-width Archivo is a different pairing problem — a sober workhorse grotesque that will sit under a partner as readily as it sits over one.

What fonts go with Courier New? Start with what the name admits: this is not the original. Courier New is Monotype’s redraw of a 1950s IBM typewriter face, rebuilt as a TrueType font so Windows could show typed-looking text at any size.

What fonts go with Barlow? Start with where the shapes came from. No fashion studio, no Swiss foundry: Jeremy Tribby built the face out of the lettering Californians read every day — the stamped plates on cars, the panels over the freeway, the numerals on a bus or a commuter train — and took the sharpness off it until the whole thing worked at every size a public system asks for.

What fonts go with Caslon? “When in doubt, use Caslon” has long been printers’ shorthand, and the advice survives because the face itself is so forgiving, warm, slightly irregular old-style letterforms that read as authoritative without demanding a particular kind of partner.

What fonts go with Helvetica? Few faces carry that question with more disagreement attached: designers cannot even agree on what Helvetica needs from a partner, only that it needs one.