A type pairing method you can reuse on every project

Famous pairings help you once. A method helps you every time. This is the four-step process I teach in every cohort.

Most type pairing advice is a list: this serif goes with that sans. It is useful on the day you read it and useless on the next project, because your client is not the brand in the example. What my students need is a way of deciding that works for a tea house, a law firm and a skincare label alike.

Step one: choose the workhorse, not the star

Start with the face that will set body copy, prices, captions and forms. Judge it at 14 pixels on a cheap Android phone held at arm's length, because that is where most of your client's customers will meet it. If the numerals are cramped or the lowercase is small, move on. Personality comes later.

Check the boring things now. Does it have tabular figures for price lists? Does it have a proper italic? If the client works in Urdu as well, is there a Nastaliq or Naskh face whose weight and rhythm can sit next to it on the same signboard? I lose more time to missing Urdu support than to any aesthetic problem.

Step two: find a display face that rhymes

Now look for the headline face. It should share one structural trait with the workhorse, such as x-height, stroke contrast or the shape of the round letters, and differ on one other, usually weight or width. Two faces that share everything look like a mistake. Two that share nothing look like two brands.

Step three: three sizes for a week

Lock yourself to three sizes: body, heading, and a large display size. Build ten real pages with only those. You will find that most of the hierarchy you thought needed a new size can be done with weight, colour or space. Clients find a three-size system far easier to keep tidy.

Step four is the exception rule. Write down the one situation where a fourth size or a third face is allowed, for example a single hand-lettered word on festive packaging. Naming the exception is what stops it from spreading.