11 free font pairing tools for designers
Author: Simon Martin
Picking the right typography and font can make your design pop and deliver your message effectively. This is doubly true for digital designers. Factors like user experience, screen size, and resolution can take your design from good to great. But, finding the perfect font pairings that blend with your design can be time-consuming and challenging.
So, if you're racing against the clock, here are eleven fantastic, free tools for font pairing and type design.
The following info is accurate as of April 29, 2024.
Font Pair makes finding the right font pairs easy with its handy filters. It offers a variety of sample pairs that work well together in a long scroll, so you can evaluate different font pairs at the same time. Copy and paste your content in order to see what works for various font combinations.
Curious about the font pairings used by other web designers? Typespiration is about to become your go-to tool. It offers a collection of websites boasting captivating fonts and color schemes. Each sample comes with a list of fonts, color mixes, and CSS code that you can quickly copy and use on your site. 🙌
A slot machine for fonts, Fontjoy is a tool that generates a completely random combination of fonts for your title, headers, and body with the click of a button. Find a font you like for one of them—say, the body text—lock it down and keep generating new fonts for the title and headers. Or, press your luck to find three of a kind.
Part of the design platform, Designs.ai, Font Pairer uses AI technology to create successful font combinations. It's built to make choosing fonts for different design elements like headlines, sub-headlines, and body copy, much simpler by suggesting well-matched font pairs. It's a great tool for designers aiming to make their creative process more efficient and maintain a consistent typography throughout their projects. Just sign up for a free account, and you'll have limited access to its features.
Fontspring’s Font Matcherator is a whizz at identifying fonts in just about any image. Just upload your image to see the results. If it can't pinpoint the exact font, it'll show you a range of similar ones. Once you've found your font, you can pair it up with a partner using one of the other tools we've mentioned here.
v-fonts.com is a must-have resource for anyone wanting to explore and experiment with variable fonts. These are typefaces that let you tweak attributes like weight, width, and optical size in a single font file.Â
The site boasts a variety of variable fonts, complete with detailed info about their design, creator, publisher, character sets, and licensing options. You can also use tags like body text, serif, sans, and decorative to find the perfect font for your design needs. Plus, it's a designer's dream, thanks to its flexibility. You can adjust a font's look for specific contexts or screen sizes, guaranteeing easy readability and visual harmony.
Lost Type is a one-of-a-kind type foundry with over 50 unique fonts from designers worldwide. While they might not be the best choice for user interface design, these fonts are excellent choices for branding. What's cool about Lost Type is their Pay-What-You-Want model, making it accessible for all creatives. Plus, all the money goes straight to the designers, showing Lost Type's dedication to nurturing creativity and community in the design world.
This is an online tool that identifies fonts from anywhere, and it is great for instant font identification. Simply scan in the font you want to identify and the font (or a close match) will be quickly found on the huge database with more than 133,000 font styles. It is the perfect companion if you often find yourself wondering about different fonts used in shops and on billboards.
If you're a Figma fan, this one's for you. This plugin transforms the way you view and select fonts in Figma, showing both locally installed and default options. It lets designers swiftly scan, compare, and pick the right typography for their projects. Offering a friendly interface, it's a great alternative to Figma's default font picker, speeding up your design process and saving you precious time. It's a must-have tool for Figma users aiming to boost their productivity.
FontReach provides good insight into how popular specific fonts are and which sites are using them. For example, Arial is the most popular font in the world, used by over 600,000 of the top million websites—including Google and Facebook. Wanna get a bit more playful? You’ve only got to compete with 3,882 other sites using Comic Sans.Â
This tool from Canva gives you 64 “starter fonts” to choose from. Once you have one, the tool will automatically find some of the best font combinations to match your starter font. Bebas Nueue looks great alongside Source Sans Pro, for example.
Fonts In Use is a public archive that showcases fonts applied in real-world projects across various formats such as advertising, packaging, and other media. It offers insights into how different typefaces are used in design, serving as inspiration and a resource for designers and typographers.
Ready, set, design!Â
With these 11 exceptional font pairing tools at your disposal, you're well-equipped to elevate your typography game. Whether you're designing for digital screens or print, these free resources can significantly streamline your creative process and ensure your projects not only look stunning but also communicate effectively.
And when it comes to implementing your chosen fonts, why not give Ceros a try? Offering a highly flexible environment, Ceros allows you to experiment with various web-safe and custom fonts, ensuring brand consistency across your designs. Request a demo and see what Ceros can do for you!
