Recently we updated our online designer with some fabulous new fonts. Many of them are handmade fonts that break with traditional styles. The new fonts follow the latest trends and their unique look opens up fresh options with more choices for font pairings. This update is great news for customers who want to make one of a kind label designs. Fonts influence the mood of anything that displays text; advertising, web pages, signs, food labels, wine labels, beer labels, are all created with a tone in mind. You might find that a little knowledge of how to pair fonts will go a long way when you create your label.
FONT STYLES
First of all you need to know what font types there are:
FONT PAIRING TIPS
Choose fonts with similar moods that express the same idea or share similar proportions. Use fonts that have the same height, kerning, and ascender or descender lengths. Font height is self explanatory so let’s look at what kerning is. Kerning is the spacing between letters. Ascender is the part of the font that extends above the main portion of the font like the letter b and descender is the part that extends below it like the letter p. Find more handy typography facts here.
Fonts come in thicknesses. Some are light some are bold. Many fonts offer several weights, which means you can use different degrees of thinness or thickness. Our online design studio may give you the option to bold or italicize a font. This will make it thicker or heavier.
Serif and sans serif fonts can be paired with any type of font, but only pair script and decorative fonts with a serif or sans serif font. To be on the safe side you can always use different weights of the same font. For instance a light version with a bold one.
Combining fonts is challenging if you don’t follow a few simple design principles. To make it easy here’s a chart to guide you when you want to use multiple fonts on a label.
FONT PAIRING GUIDE
HELPFUL TIPS ABOUT COMBINING FONTS
- Script fonts go better with sans serif fonts or slab serif fonts.
- Mixing two script fonts usually doesn’t work out so well.
- Never use all caps in a script font, it generally looks awful.
- Avoid fonts that are so different you immediately know it hurts to look at them.
- Use 2 to 3 fonts maximum.
To make it even easier here are some more font pairings for you to use when you make your own label and because it’s February and Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, the examples below are FREE PDF Valentine Cards to download. They print 5 inches wide by 7 inches high. Click on each one to go to the download page.
FONT PAIRING EXAMPLES
WOLFSBANE & SIXCAPS
NORICAN & OPEN SANS (bolded)
KATHYA & GROUNDAY
SHEPIA SCRIPT, SPELLBOUND SOLID, & SPELLBOUND
HOW TO LOCATE THE NEW FONTS
To find the new fonts in the online designer, click ‘Customize More’ on a template or ‘Customize’ from the ‘Make Your Own‘ option. Once on the design page, click ‘Add Text’ and type your words in the ‘Enter Text Here’ box. When the text is selected look to the Text Options toolbar on the right and under the Font Family hit the drop down arrow to locate the category ‘Exclusive.’ We can guide you to them via online chat weekdays 9 to 3 Pacific time.
