Choosing a font for your next project can feel like a daunting task at times, but pairing fonts can be a bit intimidating, even for designers, and you don’t have to be a designer to successfully pair fonts that will make your design stand out above the rest and have people take notice.

25+ Perfect Font Combinations [2021]: Learn How to Pair Fonts + Quick Tips

You are fixing to learn the basics of choosing great fonts that compliment each other rather than compete against one another.

Table of Contents

• Typography 101
• Anatomy of a Character
• Font Classification
• The Best Way to Pair Fonts
• 25 Font Pairings
  • Magic Sparkle & Beverly Hills
  • Lastica & Magic Sparkle
  • Assalwa & Minimalust
  • Millik & Betterfly
  • Millik & Soage
  • Mokoto & Joseph Sophia
  • Rawgly & Sweetie Almeera
  • Yourever & Million Dreams
  • Shark Bite & Hey Magnolia
  • Badhorse & Hey Magnolia
  • Mova & Petit Nuage
  • More Sugar & Beverly Hills
  • Lazydog & Million Dreams
  • Artis & Nomark
  • Soage & I Love Glitter
  • Letter Magic & Million Dreams
  • Masterblush & Sweetie Almeera
  • Million Dreams & Butter and Garlic
  • Mova & Homeland
  • Hit and Run & Photoshoot
  • Millik & About Love
  • Badhorse & Sweetie Almeera
  • Alyssum & Thank You Nurses
  • Leopard & Nomark
  • Creative Vintage Display and Script
• Creative Fabrica Fonts
• Creative Fabrica Articles
• Creative Fabrica Tools
• Conclusion

Typography 101

Typography can be a confusing subject. What is a typeface anyway? Isn’t that the same thing as a font? Even though we use them interchangeably, there is a difference. A typeface is a set of glyphs (an alphabet with its punctuation and numbers) that share a common design while a font is a set of glyphs within a typeface.

A typeface is the name of a family of related fonts, such as Calibri or Times New Roman, while the fonts are the weight, width, and style of the typeface.

A good analogy that will help you understand this is to think about the Smith Family. The Smith’s have three children. So, the Smiths are a family (typeface) of five (fonts).

Anatomy of a Character

If you examine the details of the characters that make up our alphabet, you’ll notice that each design has its differences. You don’t have to memorize the details but if you familiarize yourself with them, it will make it easier for you to communicate with a Type Designer if you ever need one.

Choosing Fonts for your Data Visualization is a great article that goes into more detail with how to pick a highly readable font for your project.

Font Classification

There are four basic font styles: those with serifs, those without, script and decorative.

Serif has decorative strokes at the end of the main stroke on a letter.

Sans Serif are fonts without the decorative strokes.

Script fonts look like handwriting, cursive, or a calligraphic style.

Display fonts come in many styles and have a decorative nature. They can be fancy, script, block, or all caps. Due to their decorative style, they are best used as headlines and in small amounts.

There’s a ton of information about font type classification out on the web, but this article Beginning Graphic Design: Typography, breaks it down into the simplest form. And if you want to go into more depth with understanding typography, check out Type Classifications and 4 Types of Fonts.

The Best Way to Pair Fonts

Choose fonts that complement or contrast each other, but never compete. You want your fonts to complement one another and the easiest way to do that is to use fonts that are within the same font family.

For example, the Ariel font has choices like Narrow, Italics, Bold, Bold Italics, all within the same font family.

If you want to contrast your fonts, look for two fonts that are completely different yet complement each other. Normally, that would be a serif font paired with a sans serif font. Just be careful that the fonts aren’t too similar, or they’ll conflict with one another, and they won’t look particularly nice together.

One font should be more prominent than the other. You can do this by varying the weight and thickness of your fonts. Your title could be big and bold, making it the main focus, and your sub-title could be a script in a smaller style distributing the weight of your design.

Stick with two to three fonts in your design. If the design is a postcard, you only need two fonts. If you’re designing a flyer or your webpage with a lot of type, three will look nice but you never want to use more than three.

25 Font Pairings

Magic Sparkle and Beverly Hills

Both Magic Sparkle and Beverly Hills have a playful nature and pair well together.

Lastica and Magic Sparkle

The modern sans serif Lastica font with its simple elegance paired with the playful serif font Magic Sparkle is such a beautiful contrast.

Assalwa and Minimalust

Assalwa paired with Minimalust creates a simple, clean minimalist design by combining a signature font with a vintage sans serif font.

Millik and Betterfly

Millik is a display font with its bold and chunky letters that can be paired with this beautiful script font, Betterfly, that is packed with glyphs giving you versatility in creating many different projects.

Millik and Soage

Millik also looks great paired with Soage. Such a complementing contrast between the bold chunky letters of a display font and the elegant thin letters of a serif font.

Mokoto and Joseph Sophia

Mokoto is a glitchy and digital display font that you can pair with this charming and elegant script font, Joseph Sophia. Such a unique combination.

Rawgly and Sweetie Almeera

Rawgly is an exquisite serif font that has classy calligraphic influences while still feeling contemporary and fresh. Pair it with this cute and fun feeling Sweetie Almeera for another unique duo.

Yourever and Million Dreams

Yourever is a brutal death metal font that you can use for any heavy metal designs or horror. Try pairing it up with this elegant and bold display font, Million Dreams.

Shark Bite and Hey Magnolia

Shark Bite is a nautical-themed display font with a splash of personality that you can get creative with its doodle font that is included. Pair it with this incredibly unique handwritten font, Hey Magnolia.

Hey Magnolia and Badhorse

Hey Magnolia also looks good paired with Badhorse, a display font with clean characters. You get a bonus with the Badhorse font which includes a script font too.

Mova and Petit Nuage

Mova is an incredibly unique display font that you can pair with Petit Nuage, a decorative signature font with a handwritten feel. These two together are perfect for modern handwritten designing needs.

More Sugar and Beverly Hills

More Sugar and Beverly Hills are both handwritten fonts but with the contrast from the bold, fun, and bounciness of More Sugar to the thin lines of the playful Beverly Hills, they really go well together.

Lazydog and Million Dreams

Lazydog is a sweet and friendly handwritten font that has a natural and unique style making it so useful for a large variety of designs. Pair it with this equally versatile modern vintage typeface, Million Dreams, and let your imagination run wild.

Artis and Nomark

Artis is a soft, free-flowing hand drawn font that features easy to use swashes. Pair it with the magical serif font, Nomark, with its touch of elegance.

Soage and I Love Glitter

Soage is an elegant and thin lettered serif font that pairs nicely with this cute handwritten font, I Love Glitter, that comes with loads of features and is very easy to use.

Letter Magic and Million Dreams

Letter Magic is a serif font with a playful nostalgic feel while Million Dreams is an elegant and bold display font. Pair them for a special retro touch to any design idea.

Masterblush and Sweetie Almeera

Masterblush and Sweetie Almeera is another unique pairing in that they both can be scripty with all the extras, but they pair well when you stick with the simplistic characters.

Million Dreams and Butter and Garlic

Pair Million Dreams with Butter and Garlic and you end up with a beautiful, romantic, and elegant design.

Mova and Homeland

Mova is a unique display font that looks great with the beautiful signature font, Homeland, which has added swashes.

Hit and Run

Hit and Run is a font that is ready to have some fun. Match it up with the script Photoshoot and you end up with a fun, classy, and fancy feel.

Millik and About Love

Millik, with its bold and chunky letters, makes a great combination with About Love, and its lovely modern calligraphic style with special heart characters.

Badhorse and Sweetie Almeera

Badhorse is another display font with clean characters that can be paired with this cute and fun Sweetie Almeera font.

Alyssum and Thank You Nurses

Alyssum is a beautiful delicate sans serif font that looks great for different styles and moods, and it pairs nicely with Thank You Nurses, with its beautiful handwritten style.

Leopard and Nomark

Leopard is a decorative font that looks great on t-shirts, posters, and more. Pair it with Nomark, a magical serif font created with a touch of elegance.

Creative Vintage Duo

Creative Vintage is an incredibly unique and interesting duo as it comes with both a display font and a script font that go well when paired together.

Creative Fabrica Fonts

Creative Fabrica is your source for fonts. With now over 73,000 fonts, from paid to discounted to free, you’ll never be without that perfect font again.

Keep up with what’s new and popular by checking out the latest fonts.

They offer a large selection of Free Fonts for Commercial Use and they all come with a commercial license. They’re updated daily and some are time sensitive so check often so you don’t miss out.

More than 5,000 Sans Serif Fonts and so much more. From Slab Serif Fonts to Script and Handwritten Fonts to Colorful Fonts, you will find the right font for your project. And there’s even more: Design Fonts, Small Fonts, Text Fonts, Bold Fonts, Italic Fonts, Graphic Design Fonts, Photoshop Fonts, Stylish Fonts and Script Fonts. You’ll always be able to find that perfect font.

Creative Fabrica Articles

Creative Fabrica also has several articles teaching you about the best fonts to use for your project. Check them out below:

• 5 Different Font Styles and How to Use Them
• 25 Stunning Cricut Fonts for Your Next Vinyl Project
• 37 Fonts for T-Shirt Designs
• 38 Best Fonts for your Pro Logo Design

Creative Fabrica Tools

With the Free Webfont Generator, you can easily convert your ttf and otf fonts into usable webfonts.

Easily work with your fonts instead of managing them with this Free Online Font Manager.

Conclusion

Now that you have a better understanding of the types of fonts and how to pair them, and some ideas on the best font pairings, what are you waiting for? Start that next project.