9.20.2012

Boost Your Blog // 5 Simple Ways to Pair Fonts

In my design career I've made a thousand million poor design choices.  But that's called learning :) I will say that finding that perfect, harmonic design balance is something I still find myself struggling with even as I progress through all I learn.

A big part of this finding balance was discovering harmony with fonts.  Now, Five Sixteenths has featured a whole load of different fonts over the course of it's life time and while I really love blogs that seem to be able to pull off using many assorted fonts, I've finally decided to use just a few here on 516.  Today I want to share with you 5 simple font pairings for your blog, invites, or any other text based project.  These tips sort of go off of the new DIY blog design (check out the old design here) & how fonts create a look for your blog.  

You can learn how to take a complete blog design from start to finish -including what serif & sans serif fonts say about your design- in the Blogging Basic eBook released earlier this September

Paring Fonts:
Pairing two fonts together, let's do this! The bigger font in the examples below is intended for your header or post titles & the smaller font is intended for your post body.

Handwritten + Sans Serif
Dakota & Josefin Sans
Sans Serif + Different Sans Serif:
Bebas Neue & Josefin Sans
 Sans Serif + Serif
Caviar Dreams & Didot
 Strong Serif + Rounded Sans Serif
Josefin Slab & Questrial
Classic Serif Font + Another Classic Serif Font
Didot & Georgia
One more tip: Keep handwritten fonts in the header or post title of your blog.  In these places, the font is big enough to see the words clearly.  Handwritten or cursive fonts in a body of text at a small font size are incredibly hard to read!  

Some of these fonts are built into the Template Designer here in Blogger & others are Google Web Fonts you can use in your template through html.  The great thing about the Template Designer is the ability to play with & pair fonts and instantly see the result in the preview!  Since fonts give a lot to your design, consider how well they pair together & what you want the fonts to bring to the design.

I hope this made a bit of sense to you & helps you see how fonts work together!

What are your favorite fonts?








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5 comments:

  1. oh, great tips! I really love the pairing in my header. :)

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  2. hi what are the spacing between each sentences? and between the words?

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is a great guide! Right now I'm using Questrial for both my headings & body text. I think it has a very minimal, Scandinavian vibe... but I'm thinking of trying a serif font in the body text for a more classic meets modern feel. Any suggestions for serifs that pair well with Questrial as body text?

    ReplyDelete

Hi there, thanks so much for taking the time to comment. I love &value each & every one! If you have a question, I will respond as soon as I can. Don't be afraid to shoot me an email! If you have a blog, I will pop on by :)