The other I attempted to pair was one I had not seen before, called Poor Richard. While not as simple as many other fonts, and possibly not fully professional, there are a great many things about this font that are extremely beautiful and elegant. The use of curves is beautiful and I find it somewhat whimsical. Note the curving serif (not quite sure what to call a serif on the top of a letter, inverse serif?) on the top of the capital L, as well as the lines curving inward on the lowercase a.
This font was also difficult for me to match, due to its very low center of gravity. The ascenders on the d and l are very tall in relation to the x-height, and finding a sans-serf with ascenders that long was difficult. The best I found was Calibri. I think they do work, but will keep my eyes open for a sans with the lower center of gravity.

The two typefaces I chose were Curlz MT & the abhorrently infamous Comic sans. I wanted to have two oddly unique type fonts in contrast with one another. While Curlz MT is unique and interesting, it does run the risk of being used out of context, and it’s use must be taken very carefully. Comic sans however has the 99.99999% chance of not working within any context and is used here as a warning for what it can make one look like in the design world. The following illustration is also something I was thinking about doing in class (the relationship of image & font. Please give me feedback!
-Sia

Like a lot of other people, I also paired serif and sans-serif fonts for contrast.

When starting this assignment I first looked through all of the fonts I already had and then I went off and explored some nice free fonts via the links I sent out to the list.

After the long search, I ended up really loving two serif fonts and envisioning them as body text. My next step was then to find nice companion typefaces.

My first pairing is Goudy Old Style (18 pt) for the body text with Gill Sans (36 pt) as the companion title/header typeface. Goudy Old Style, like other old style fonts, is very readable which is why I like it for the body text. The serifs are very shapely, rounded with a gentle curve. Look how fluid the “f” and “g” are–so beautiful and graceful. I love that the ear on the g is slightly curved upwards and that the dots on the i and j are diamond shaped (though you can only really tell at large point sizes). Also, there is a strong diagonal emphasis (look at the oblique terminus of the vertical stroke on the t, j and the rest of the serif tops).

I think Gill Sans, a humanist sans-serif typeface, complements this font very well. Like other humanist sans-serifs, it’s more similar to the serifs in that it’s less mechanical in appearance than some other sans-serifs (e.g. ones that are more geometrical like Futura). I like that the “t” in Gill Sans also has the oblique terminus of the vertical stroke. When compared at the same point size, both fonts have the same x-height and their descenders are both the same height as well, relatively short just barely dipping below the baseline. Also, I like how the capital letters were modeled off the monumental Roman capitals, the proportions look very pleasing (i.e. I like that you could divide the space up into a grid and it would just all be very square/rectangular, it gives the letters an air of importance).

My other pair is Fontin Sans Small Caps (36 pt) for the heading/title with Didot (18 pt). I like how Didot has very curly serifs for the “j” and “y” descenders and for the “f” ascender. I think the small caps version of Fontin Sans acts as a very good header and a nice contrast to Didot.

Pair #1:
Heading - Big Caslon
Subheading - Abadi MT Condensed Light

After testing out various size combinations, I thought this pairing of the larger serif font with the smaller sans-serif subheading was the most aesthetically pleasing. The Big Caslon serif “headline” immediately commands a kind of stately presence, while the Abadi MT Condensed Light reflects a modern, simple and playful element underneath. Interestingly, I tried replacing Big Caslon with Times New Roman and some other serif fonts, with less of an effect. Big Caslon has greater contrast in its line weights and rounder enclosures which I feel gives it a stronger presence on the page.

Pair #2:
Normal Text - Cochin
Weighted Text - Trebuchet MS

Here I used Trebuchet as a mostly sans-serif font to highlight certain words out of the serif text. I thought these paired well together, because while the two are obviously different, it’s not a complete departure from the serif fontface, due to the fact that Trebuchet contains remnants of feet on a few of the letters. Also, the obvious difference in x-height turned out to be appropriate to help further distinguish the highlighted words from the rest of the text.

The first example is “Times New Roman” pairing with “Tw Cen Condensed.” I chose “Times New Roman” because it is the most popular and common font. Although “Times New Roman” has wider letter spacing than “Tw Cen MT Condensed”, both fonts have similar geometry, the same X-height and kerning spacing.

The second pairing is “Gill Sans” and “Bell MT.” There are even more geometric similarities between these two typefaces. They have the same kerning spacing, X-height, ascender and descender height. Most importantly, the curvature of the letter “j” and slant-ness of the letter “y” are also very alike.

I’ve also paired four other fonts. The picture can be found here:

Pairing 1 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/93471737@N00/2323431534/sizes/l/

Pairing 2 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/93471737@N00/2322613141/sizes/l/

I chose the Minion and Myriad combination for its physical attributes. They have similar geometry (round insides of the a’s/b’s/d’s as well as a vertical center) and similar x-heights. I find these fonts very simple and friendly; perhaps useful in a variety of contexts, ranging from ads in the economist magazine to cookbook recipes.

And I chose the Birch and Rosewood combination for its cultural (rather than physical) attributes. Each of these fonts look like they originated from the south. Specifically, the Rosewood font resembles text from a brand iron and the Birch font looks like the text from a cowboy “Wanted” poster. I would use these fonts for the website/menu/ads for a BBQ restaurant.