Are you stumped on how to make your visual brand appear high-end? The quickest and easiest way to elevate your visual designs is to revisit your typographic font pairings.

To get started, let’s go over some basic typography definitions.

The Oxford Dictionary defines typography as the style and appearance of printed matter.

A typeface is a particular design of type, whereas a font is defined as a set of type of one particular face and size. Fonts are also specific computer files that contain all the characters and glyphs within a typeface.

Some popular typeface styles include:

Serif typefaces are called “serif” in reference to a slight projection finishing off a stroke of a letter in certain typefaces.

Sans-Serif typefaces are named because they lack the “serif” projections finishing off strokes of letters.

Display typefaces include a wide variety of styles, but are unsuitable for body copy. Instead, display typefaces are best suited for headlines.

When pairing fonts, we like to include one serif and one sans-serif or vice versa, to create a sense of contrast within the typography. You can also pair a display typeface as a heading with a sans-serif body typeface. As a general rule of thumb we like to use a more bold choice as a heading and a light and airy choice for the body.

Below are just several examples of free font pairings you can use to elevate your brand presence and attract higher paying clients. You can find and download all of these from Google Fonts. We highly recommend using Google Fonts in your brand guidelines because they are most universally used across many different platforms and are designed to be web friendly.

1. Pair sans-serif Montserrat as your heading font and serif Cardo as your body font. 

2. Pair sans-serif Open Sans as your heading font and serif Libre Baskerville as your body font.

3. Pair sans-serif Raleway as your heading font and serif Merriweather as your body font.

4. Pair display Oswald as your heading font and serif Old Standard TT as your body font.

5. Pair display Abril Fatface as your heading font and sans-serif Lato as your body font.

6. Pair serif Playfair Display as your heading font and sans-serif Open Sans as your body font.

7. Pair serif Merriweather as your heading font and sans-serif Muli Light as your body font.

8. Pair serif Cardo as your heading font and sans-serif Josefin Sans as your body font.

9. Pair serif Libre Baskerville as your heading font and sans-serif Montserrat as your body font.

10. Pair serif Quattrocento as your heading font and sans-serif Quattrocento Sans as your body font.

While we have 10 pairings listed here, there are many more you can create with Google Fonts or even fonts you may decide to purchase. When pairing your fonts, keep in mind what type of mood you want to convey. Do you want your visual brand to appear casual? Bold? Elegant? Your typeface should coordinate with your brand mood.

Which font pairing listed above is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below!