A Font for All Knowledge I: 9 Exciting and Beautiful Google Font Pairings for Your Pages
Fonts are the clothes of online words.
Sure, that opening line isn’t my best… but who cares, it looks gorgeous!
Certain fonts can elicit different emotions depending on who’s viewing them. Not only do you have to choose the right font for what you want your reader to feel, but also the image you want for your service or product… and those can be two different things.
For example, a fun and casual font is Comic Sans, so it would make sense for kids’ toys. But that font’s been overused to the point where, to people even slightly in the know, it looks like an embarrassing cliche.
Not the best choice for your classy, organic wood building blocks.
So here, fresh from our designers’ dreams, are a bunch of attractive – and appropriate – font pairings for you and your Convertri site:
Oswald and EB Garamond
This sleek and classy sans serif/serif combo exudes luxury. Slim and eye-catching, Oswald is reminiscent of old newspapers and a bygone age of good design. Meanwhile, the understated (but never overused) EB Garamond is the perfect body font choice: readable even while small, elegant… and it’s not Times New Roman.
This combination works because it focuses on readability without compromising on uniqueness. Subtle differences are enough to make it stand out from any other sans serif/serif combination, and is great for real estate agencies, luxury boutiques, attorneys, or anyone whose offering is high quality.
Raleway and Roboto Slab
Here we have a pairing that’s casual and carefree, but isn’t too “fun” or childlike. This is an all-serif combo, and on first glance the two fonts look quite similar, which lends a feel of minimalism and continuity to the page. These are retro-looking fonts which evoke typewriters and old textbooks: studious, but partial to the odd spotty sock and not afraid to let their hair down after lectures.
Best for products like stationery or books or down-to-earth services, both of these fonts look great as either headline or body fonts so don’t be afraid to experiment.
Raleway and Open Sans
There’s a reason we use Raleway so much. Look at it – that’s a work of art! If you’re after a clean, modern look with a casual edge, this pairing is perfect. Solid enough to provide a readable body font at any scale, Open Sans in Regular weight is not your average Arial. It levels up your content with plenty of whitespace for easy reading, while complementing its headline in Raleway with eye-catching curves and smooth letter spacing.
This pairing is great for any modern, design-conscious page.
Playfair Display Bold Italic and Source Sans Pro
Playfair is eye-catching all on its own, but when you transform it with bold and italic styling it becomes an altogether different creature. This pairing is luxurious, high-end and fashionable above all else – use it for clothes, style, fashion, interior design, luxury products or feminine branding. It’s the Vogue of Google Fonts – use it for only your most important headlines.
Paired with the ultra-readable, super minimalist Source Sans in Regular weight, this is an unbeatable combo that will give your pages a clean-cut and classy look.
Arvo and Lato
Arvo’s gloriously chunky serifs evoke the kind of retro goodness you see Roboto Slab wear so well, but one step further. It’s minutely narrower letters make it look a tad more modern, so you’ll want this font for your headline where you need all eyes on what you have to say.
Under that, Lato is the super-readable font that delivers on Arvo’s set up. These two work so beautifully together because they give each other what the other is missing: a little personality here, a little seriousness there. This is a balanced pairing that works for most anything, but especially software and SaaS that blends functionality with a human interface.
Julius Sans One and Monda
This font pairing is for pages with attitude. The readability is not so high as with other font pairings listed here, but that just means your reader’s eyes will linger on the surprising vectors of Julius a little longer. With carefully thought-out curves and innovative design, this headline font is very Ancient Rome.
Complementing these curves with straights and right angles in all the right places, Monda is a modern, techno-flavoured font whose harshness feels toned down when paired with Julius. This is a striking combo, perfect for art, bold nonprofit causes or anything creative.
Permanent Marker and Varela Round
Make a statement with this combo which smashes thick, all-caps brushstrokes up against clean, round type to create a headline to grab the attention, and a message that will definitely sink in. Permanent Marker looks exactly how you’d think with chunky, imperfect letters which evoke punk and rebelliousness. Countering the attitude, we have Varela Round which is more like a font you’d find at school – carefully considered, light, cheerful and comforting.
This is a pairing you’d use for a creative coach, a teen site or any independent food and drink outlet.
Anton and Quicksand
We’ve used this bold, impactful pairing here in our Simple Opt-in page template for maximum impact. Anton’s thick, bold letters with narrow spacing creates a headline that demands attention – the key here is to use minimal design elements around this font to let it speak for itself. Quicksand is a more light-hearted, rounder font that offsets the heavy-handed Anton nicely, creating a balanced page that needs no introduction.
This combination is great for any modern opt-in for products and services that could use an eye-catching design.
Oswald and Roboto
This is a combination we love to use a lot here at Convertri, and with good reason. Oswald is a mid-impact retro font when it’s used in sentence case, but when you put it in all caps – and maybe bold it up a bit – it takes on a strength that’s perfect for hard-hitting headlines which demand action. Roboto is a perfect foil for it: more understated, more pared-down and minimalist than traditional serif fonts, but with a thickness which plays well with Oswald.
This combo is great for opt-ins, SaaS and internet marketing.
Lato
Our last one’s a bit of a trick, but it’s a good one, promise. The font Lato pairs beautifully with itself. Of course, a lot of fonts do, but Lato’s simplistic design and flexibility means you can execute subtle styling differences that mirror other font pairings – with half the loading time! If your message speaks for itself and all you want is a solid, reliable font – but nothing too samey – Lato is all that, and more. We use it on our Free Plus Shipping page template, and you can see how much a bit of bolding makes a difference.
What’s your favourite pairing from the ones above? Do you have a favourite you’d love to see incorporated in a future template? Or is there a font or pairing that sets your teeth on edge and you never want to subject your eyes to it again? Let us know in the Facebook group or drop us a comment!
