3. Mix Serif with Sans Serif
This is my favorite approach — using a serif font (one with flourishes at the end of strokes like Times New Roman) with a san serif font (typeface without any stroke embellishments like Helvetica). You can use either style font as the headline or the text. This works well due to the contrast of the two fonts. But remember the feeling of the fonts still needs to be in harmony. If the fonts’ feelings are too different, they’ll clash.
If you choose two fonts that are the same — serif/serif or san serif/san serif — and they are too similar, they’ll fight each other. You need to ask yourself why you’re mixing two different font families instead of just using the same font family. See the sample below.
4. Contrast Font Weights and Size
Contrast is a good thing in type design. Using a font family’s different weights and font size are the easiest ways to create contrast. Selecting fonts with a large family of font styles makes this much easier. The samples below use Rotis Sans Serif and Garamond. Notice how using fonts with dramatic weight differences creates harmony and a clear hierarchy. This is one of the easiest ways to create good typography with limited type knowledge.
5. Create Distinct Roles to Each Font
Good type design relies heavily on consistency. One of the easiest ways to be consistent — assign a specific role to each font in your design. For example you can assign headlines your bold san serif font, subheads with a medium weight san serif and body text with a light serif font. See the sample below how this might work.
If You’d Like to Learn More
I could write many more articles on the use of type. But if you follow these basic points, you’ll improve your presentations, proposals and flyers.
If you’d like to learn even more, here’s a link that gives you access to many tutorials specifically about typography: 82 top-quality typography tutorials. I can also recommend Lynda.com, a wonderful video training site with titles like: The 33 Laws of Typography, Foundations of Typography: Choosing and Combining Typefaces and Foundations of Typography.
Lastly, if you want to improve your typographic designs simply look; look at everything. But while looking, keep these basic principles in mind and ask yourself “Why do I like this?” Then start to see the structure behind the design.
