|
|
 |
| |
he history of type design that we've just skimmed through is
probably the only useful guide (besides your own experience and
preferences, of course) in choosing fonts for "plain text," one-face
projects. In such cases your single concern should be about a good
match between the style, semantics, and intended impact of your text and
corresponding properties of the typeface it uses. You can't set
Shakespeare plays in a sans serif font (even of the "humanist" variety),
and fragile Modern serifs are not appropriate for a pushy advertisement
message.
However, the majority of design projects pose much more difficult
problems: Most often, you have to find two or more different typefaces,
each matching not only its corresponding text but also all other fonts
in the composition. As I've once noted, creating solid
contrast links between different fonts is a real challenge. Each
font being nearly as complex as a human being, it is next to impossible
to find two fonts whose features, so to say, point in opposite
directions but along the same line---which is a necessary prerequisite
for any contrast link.
Therefore, the safest option in any project is using the same font,
or its different variants (e.g. bold or italic), for all of your
needs. This "monofont" solution may not be perfect, but in many
cases it may be better to ensure one more aspect of consistency instead of taking risky
aesthetic decisions. Using one font is by far preferable in small
compositions such as logos, where two or (God forbid) more fonts would
have too little room to show their true nature, and any difference
between them would therefore become an annoyance rather than a meaningful
opposition.
But, let's say you really need two fonts for your work (for
example, one for headings and the other for body text), and you're not
satisfied by using variations of the same font. Which pair to
choose? The basic answer is well known: serif fonts work fine with sans
serifs, and vice versa. These two types of fonts are different
enough for their contrast to be immediately obvious, resulting in a
strong and stable connection.
Here again, the font history may give you valuable hints on which
sans serif and serif faces work best together. As these two font
types were not developed in parallel, we cannot base our decisions on
historical synchronism; most, if not all, today's serif faces are rooted
in past ages, while the majority of sans serifs were created in the
current century. More useful is matching the level of
"humanization," liberty and even looseness vs. that of rigidness
and artificiality. Remembering what I've said about the general
trends of dehumanization of serifs and humanization of sans serifs, we
may conclude that early serif faces should be a good match for late sans
serifs, and vice versa.
In fact, I'm not sure if it is possible to successfully combine late
Modern serifs with early geometric sans serifs---both these designs are
dehumanized to the point of being dry and even awkward, but their
underlying ideologies are too different and even disparate.
However, for higher levels of humanization this recipe works perfectly;
just consider that the basic pair of typefaces for all operating systems
are Times and Helvetica, which are a good match because they're both
transitional---that is, not too "zealous" but not too liberal either.
|
|
 |
|
Link 1: The Russian Internet is thoroughly Humanist |
|
For another example, look at the logo of a Russian magazine called
Internet. [Link no longer in service. -Ed] Although, as I said, different
fonts should be avoided in logos, here the two humanist faces, Garamond
and Frutiger, work perfectly together because there's no visual in the
composition and the fonts are left to interact only with each other, and
because the contrast between them is so deep and multiaspect (in font,
face, color, and slant). Moreover, the same two fonts are
extensively used throughout the magazine itself (more consistently in
the print version than on the site, due to the obvious HTML
restrictions).
|
|
| |
The AlphaWorks site offers a similar yet
contradicting example. As most other IBM sites, this one was
developed by Studio
Archetype; however, the decision to make a logo from the humanist
Meta sans serif font (particularly favored by this studio's designers)
and an old-fashioned Modern serif font (which is traditional for IBM's
corporate style) resulted in a composition of questionable
merits---exactly because of the clashing levels of humanization in these
two fonts. It is difficult to suppress the feeling that the
contrast in this logo is either insufficient or irrelevant.
|
 |
| Link 2:
Studio Archetype and IBM meet (font) face to (font) face |
|
| |
As you may conclude from these examples, it is usually a good idea to
accompany the contrast of fonts by the contrast of other typesetting
aspects, particularly font variations (bold, italic, etc.). These
variations are possible along the axes of weight, slant, and width---but
you should understand that these axes are not equally applicable to
different font types.
You may have noticed that many sans serif fonts do not have italics in
the proper sense, but only slanted (sometimes called oblique)
variations. This is not by accident; the very nature of sans serif
design doesn't allow for an easy transformation into an italic face (or
at least, into what we're accustomed to regard as such). Contrary to
that, most serif fonts have really dinky italics that, despite having
very different lettershapes, are well dovetailed with the roman variety.
On the other hand, demibold and especially bold variations do not work
particularly well with many serif faces---their serifs seem to obstruct
the change in weight, and the relative difference in strokes' thickness
(i.e. the level of contrast) is difficult to preserve in different
weights. (Interestingly, a high level of contrast is less of an
obstacle for changing weight---hence the extra-bold Fat Face and its
likes, built upon Modern serif fonts with their increased contrast.)
Sans serifs, on the contrary, are very easygoing when it comes to
changing weight---many of them have a wide range of weight variations,
from extra light to extra bold. This means that each font has its own
most natural variations, and you must take these into account
when
working with fonts; for example, in a professional work you're much more
likely to see a combination of a bold sans serif font and an italic
serif font than vice versa.
What are other ways to increase contrast in a multi-font composition?
Sure, a serif/sans serif pair is not the most conflicting of all
possible font combinations. You could take, for example, an enticing
decorative font, such as a stylized blackletter or script face, and put
it alongside a plain sans serif font. Unfortunately, such extreme
combinations are rarely satisfying. When fonts are too different, they
can't live happily together; as we've already found out, contrast is the strongest
between two objects when their opposite features are many, but some
common traits are still there.
You certainly cannot use a peculiar decorative font for all text on the
page, if only because such fonts are often barely legible. If you've
used a fancy font for a heading or logo, try to be as discreet as
possible in your other font choices. As I've said, stylistically sans
serif is not the best match for decorative faces; however, it is often
better to environ a complex-shaped fancy heading with a plain,
graphically poor sans serif text blocks than with a serif font which
usually has a much stronger personality. It is also advisable to use
quite different sizes and colors for the two fonts, in order to move
their contrast from the dimension of lettershapes to the more flexible
opposition of sizes, colors, and visibility.
It is worth noting that professional designers rarely use something
besides the simple, traditional typefaces. I intentionally restricted my
historical sketch to the mainstream type design, because I believe that
for a beginner designer it's much more important to carefully study a
small set of classical typefaces than to indulge in "cool" designs,
often of questionable quality. The well-known fonts are
almost "transparent" for perception not because they're primitive,
but on the contrary, because their complexity is well balanced, because
they're carefully polished by their creators and by the centuries of
use. It is this transparency that allows the immaterial qualities of
your text and design show through the material envelope of the font.
|
|
   
 |
|