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10 Typeface Pairs for Cash-Poor Designers

cut pink paper valentine for typeface pairs

Several of my students asked me to recommend serif and sans serif typefaces that go well together. I realized that most of the combinations I was going to suggest involved purchasing fonts. With many of them working their way through school, it didn’t seem fair to expect them to buy fonts for my class. So I began looking for pairs in the core sets of fonts that all graphic designers have on their computers—that install with the Apple operating system, Adobe Creative Suite, and Microsoft Office. When I couldn’t find a list on the web, I started experimenting.

I set the following parameters: the typefaces had to be in the three core sets, and have a least four weights (regular, bold, italic, and bold italic). To make a good pair I looked for similar letter shapes, x-heights, stroke weights, and “feel.” I found over 20 pairs, but there isn’t enough room to include them all. I’m only posting 10. On the first line the letters may appear to be the same size because their sizes have been adjusted to make comparison easier.

I hope you find the the following 10 combinations useful.

Calibri & Book Antiqua (MS Office / MS Office)