Yearbook ideas

Font Pairing 101

3 November 2015

The fonts you choose for your books will really influence the finished look of your pages so it’s worth spending a little time getting the perfect selection in place. First think about your theme for the book as this will probably affect your choices straight away. If you’re looking to create something really sleek and professional, formal angular fonts are great. If you want a more personal feel, selecting a palette of playful handwritten fonts will really help you create this affect. Whatever you choose, this will impact on the font family you put together and to help you get started here’s our 2 step plan to pro font pairings….

Step 1

Think about the areas of text you’ll have in your book. Probably profile answers will be the most text heavy areas so this is your first focus point. If you’ve only got a small space for profile answers, you might want to avoid smaller, ornate or swirly fonts. Whilst they look fab as big titles, these font styles can be hard to read if they’re too small and ideally you want to be able to read those profiles right?!

Step 2

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Choose a complimentary or contrasting font for page titles and larger text. Complimentary fonts as shown in the top example work in harmony with the main body font for a very smooth finish. You can always change the text colours to generate contrast in this instance 🙂 The bottom example shows two contrasting fonts, one thin and one thicker and curvier. Which do you prefer?

fontfamily

If your heart is set on one consistent font throughout the book, you might like to try incorporating the same font in its various italic, bold and caps forms to help you keep things fresh and interesting. Next to a font name in the theme menu, you’ll see a drop down of any available alternatives for you to use. Just add the same font to two of your palette choices for example and set one to normal and one to italic.

Want more font ideas? Check out our typography board on Pinterest for some creative uses of text and layouts: