Font pairing for posters: six combinations that work

Two voices, and what makes them different

Every poster has two kinds of text: the words people see from across the room, and the words they read once they come closer. The first need character and weight; the second need to be calm and legible at a small size. Give each its own face, or its own weight of one face, and never let a third voice in without a clear job, such as a mono for dates and codes.

Contrast can come from several places: weight (black against regular), width (condensed against wide), style (serif against sans, a script against a grotesque), case (capitals against lower case) and size. Pick one or two of these and push them hard. A bold sans with a slightly bolder sans is not a pairing; a heavy condensed sans with a light book serif is.

One family, many voices

Pairing within one big family is the safest start, because the shapes already agree. Here the headline is Inter at weight 740 with a line height of 84 % and tight negative letter spacing, so three lines lock into one block. The small lines are Inter at weight 600 and 28 px: the headline is 6.5 times their size. The arrows are in Inter Tight, a narrower cut of the same design.

A useful ratio for posters: the headline at least four to six times the size of the small type, and the small type no smaller than 1.5 % of the poster’s width. Below that ratio, the two voices start to blur into one.

Six pairings that work, with Cyrillic

All of these are in Paletoo’s font library and set Ukrainian properly, with ґ, є, і, ї and the apostrophe. 1. Inter Black with Inter Regular: one family, extreme weights, as on this poster. 2. Unbounded with Fixel Text: a wide, round, loud display face over a calm Ukrainian grotesque. 3. Oswald with Lora: a tall condensed gothic for long headlines, a book serif for the text. 4. Playfair Display with Manrope: a high-contrast serif with a tidy modern sans, for menus, fashion and events. 5. Fixel Display with IBM Plex Mono: a grotesque headline with technical mono captions, for tech, data and timetables. 6. Pinyon Kyiv with Cormorant: a formal script for one or two words, with a refined serif under it, for invitations and concerts.

For more fonts with a real Ukrainian Cyrillic, each shown on a specimen, see Ukrainian fonts for design, and for how type alone can carry a poster, the typography poster guide.

Common mistakes

Two similar sans serifs side by side. Two display faces fighting for attention. A script in all capitals, or used for a paragraph. Five weights where two would do. Loose letter spacing on big type, which needs it tighter. And a font without the letters you need: if a Ukrainian word suddenly shows in a different font, the face has no Cyrillic, so pick one that does before you go further.

Made in Paletoo

Every picture on this page was made in Paletoo — these three with the same steps on other templates:

Step by step in Paletoo

1. Press “Open in Paletoo” to open the post as your own document. Layers shows a header row, the headline, the big “v0.1” with its block shadow, two small captions on the ring, and a footer row.

2. Click the headline to select it. The Design tab shows its place, and Typography its font, Inter, at 182 px with a Weight of 740, a Line height of 84 % and a tight negative Letter spacing.

   

3. Click the small line at the bottom right, “open studio, sat 12:00”. Typography shows the same family, Inter, at 28 px and a Weight of 600: the quiet voice, linked to the text style called Label.

   

4. Click an empty part of the canvas so nothing is selected. The Design tab lists the document’s Text styles: Number, Heading, Label, Symbols and Ring caption, each with its font and size.

   

5. Double-click the headline to write your own words. To try another pairing, open a style with Edit style and choose a new font: every line linked to it changes at once, so you can compare pairings in seconds.

6. When the pairing feels right, press Export for a PNG of 1080 × 1350 for the feed, or a PDF with Include bleed to print it as a poster.

Make it your own

Change the Heading style’s font in Edit style and leave Label alone: you are testing only the loud voice, which is the one that changes the poster’s character.

If a new headline font looks too loose at 182 px, lower its Letter spacing a few steps; big type almost always wants less space than its default.

For a three-voice version, give the dates and the hashtag a mono such as IBM Plex Mono, at the same 28 px Font size, so the third voice changes texture, not size.

Make it online

• Poster makerMake a poster from a template that already has the layout right, then export a print-ready PDF or an image for screens.
• Text effects onlineChrome, gold foil, emboss, cut-out letters, outlines and warps — and the words stay editable text.
• Instagram post makerDesign a post at the right size from a real template, then export a sharp PNG or JPG — free, in your browser.

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