Comments on: Mixing Typefaces Cheat Sheet

By: Best of July 2007 | Best of the Month

Best of July 2007 | Best of the Month — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:41:52 +0000

[…] How To Mix Fonts: Typeface Cheat Sheet This PDF cheat sheet on Mixing Typefaces can help you decide on which combination of typefaces to use. In this sheet, there are 22 typefaces that are cross-referenced with each other, and each combination is given a number to indicate their degree of incompatibility. Besides: 80 Beautiful Typefaces For Professional Design [via InspirationBit]. […]

By: Vivien

Vivien — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 04:36:17 +0000

Lauren, thanks for the book recommendation. I’m looking for a good book on Typography. I’ve got “The Non-Designer’s Design Book”, but I’d like to have another one. Looks like A Typographic Workbook might be the one.

If someone has any other recommendations, I’d love to hear about them.

By: LaurenMarie

LaurenMarie — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 18:45:57 +0000

Hey, that’s a great resource! Thank you for sharing.

I generally use a list I found of “Classic” typefaces/fonts/pretty letter designs. I really wish I could find the website I got the list from (I wrote it down on paper instead of bookmarking it). It is a list of serif and sans serif fonts including many of the ones listed in that matrix PDF. I’m partial to serif fonts myself, and am always using Garamond, Caslon, Aldine (from the Adobe Type Collection, it reminds me of letterpress forms) and Jenson for body copy. Sabon was listed as one very commonly found in books. Optima is a really nice Sans Serif with style.

For the title or display fonts, I usually try to pick one that matches the feel I want for the piece. This is the difficult part for me. There are so many that could work, which is the “right” one? I’m forever going back to my A Typographic Workbook. There are so many useful chapters in it and one of them is called Matching Type with a Message. There are also suggested projects or exercises at the end of every chapter that will help you understand the concepts and chapter objectives even better. Needless to say, I really love this book!

Oh, one other thing about the book, it has about 75 pages (the last chapter) dedicated to all different styles of fonts. It lists the name, a sample of the font at different combos of point sizes, tracking and leading and it gives a short history of it (if available).

By: Vivien

Vivien — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 06:07:11 +0000

I hope you’re not too disappointed about Comic Sans not making the list, Ronald?

Simonne, when looking for a typeface to use for the body text of your webpage, you should always go with Web Safe types that everyone has installed on their computers (Times, Helvetica, Verdana, Arial, Georgia, Courier, Trebuschet, and a few others). The types I was talking about in these articles are for the print and graphic images for websites only.

You’re welcome, Aaron. Glad you found this cheat sheet useful. I sure did

By: Aaron :: miLienzo.com

Aaron :: miLienzo.com — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:21:53 +0000

Thanks for this Vivien - a really useful find. I don’t think type is my strong point, it’s mostly guess work with me. In the past I’ve just trusted my eye, and luckily a few combinations I’ve used are 1s on the cheat-sheet.

I’ll be adding the link to my bookmarks.

By: Simonne

Simonne — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 11:43:35 +0000

I’m so afraid of errors, that I rather avoid any combinations and use only the most common typefaces (I don’t know what happens if a reader does not have a particular font installed - I suppose the page won’t display correctly).

By: Ronald Huereca

Ronald Huereca — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 06:17:43 +0000

Notice Comic Sans isn’t anywhere on the list up there