
The 10 Commandments of Typography
Typography is one of the most important elements of design, after all, with an unreadable font, a book or magazine would be essentially useless. The info graphic below details what types of fonts compliment others, the differences between weights, sans-serif and serif fonts amongst a load more useful info. Team the info from this up with the 10 commandments of logo design and you’ll be well on the way to logo nirvana.
- Know your font families – GHOTMS, Geometric Sans, Humanist Sans, Old Style, Transitional, Modern, Slab Serifs
- Combine a sans-serif font with a serif font – contrast is king here, the combo of sans serif and serifs can be really effective, just don’t go overboard (see no.7)
- Combine a serif font with a sans-serif font – the same as above, just turned upside down
- Combining two similar fonts is not cool – You’ve got the opportunity to do something striking, don’t make it look like you’ve forgotten what font you initially used then found something similar
- Contrast is key – See points 2 and 3
- Stick to two fonts, only go to three if you absolutely have to – Don’t over complicate things, only go for three different typefaces if it’s essential.
- Don’t mix different moods – don’t mix something ‘Wild West’ with a graffiti type font then some sort of calligraphy font, that’s never going to work.
- Combine fonts of complimentary moods and periods in time – it stands to reason that these will ‘get on’.
- Use different weights of fonts from the same families – they were designed to match up, so make use of that.
- Lastly avoid using any of the fonts shown in point 10, there are a whole lot more to add to that list as well… (this is purely down to personal preference of course!)
Credit to Designmantic for the artwork for this info graphic.