Concord, Contrast, and Conflict... Oh my!

Years ago, I worked with a young designer who always matched the same handful of typefaces with each other, regardless of the project he was working on. Despite the fact that we had thousands of fonts at our disposal, he inevitably just used those 8-10 options, and got really edgy and defensive any time he was asked to change them. One day, I asked him outright why he always gravitated towards those specific choices, and he told me that one of his graphic design instructors had used them as examples of typefaces that could be mixed and matched, so those are the ones he used. I asked him if he knew why his instructor had recommended those pairings, and he shook his head—he didn't remember the hows and whys of those pairings, so he refused to budge from his comfort zone.

Mixing and matching typefaces is a subtle art, but ultimately, the goal is to create concord and contrast—not conflict. Some people aim for the tried-and-true method of pairing a serif with a sans serif, or a sans serif with a script, but those rules can create some pretty heinous combinations if you're just grabbing them at random.

A better approach is to determine what type of feeling you'd like the text to convey, and then assign fonts that serve specific purposes.

Concord

You can combine fonts within a type family in a variety of widths, styles, and weights that work well together because they were designed to work together.

With these low-contrast type combinations, you really can't go wrong with combining the different weights/widths, but each style within a family should be used for a specific purpose: You'd call attention with bold, but place emphasis with italic.

Bottom line: it's a means of differentiating areas of copy, as it changes the text colour.

If we were going to compare this to fine art principles, it's like working in a monochromatic palette; adjacent hues that work with one another.

Contrast 

The opposite of concord, you're creating contrast by using different type families. The basic rule in this regard is as follows:
If you have a serif, pair it with a sans serif.
If you have a sans serif, you can pair it with a script.
As long as you're pulling from notably different type families, and not combining two that are incredibly fussy and ornate, you're probably doing something right.

Good on you.

Fine art comparison: opposites on a colour wheel. These would be hues that complement one another because they contrast and/or vibrate.

Conflict

There are many different ways that font pairings can fall into disharmony and conflict, and you want to avoid them... like pairing two different scripts, two different serifs, or two different sans: the general rule here is NO.

One big hellstorm occurs when there isn't enough difference between the typefaces you've chosen. As an example, I recently came across a banner ad that combined Futura and Gill Sans, and my retinas started to foam. This pairing is a case of conflict; it combines a geometric sans serif with a humanist one, and although some people might argue that the friendly rounded-ness of Gill Sans complements Futura's sharp, geometric edges, I think this combination is absolutely appalling because they look too similar to create contrast, and they look too dissimilar to create concord.

NO! Bad puppy.

If you're dead set on using two sans serifs together, then consider using two different weights or widths from the same font family, like teaming Univers roman and bold, or Garamond regular and italic.

Pairing Futura with Gill Sans is the equivalent of serving spaghetti carbonara with a side order of fettuccine Alfredo. Seriously? Serve it with a f*cking salad.

*Note: One caveat with regard to pairing different styles from the same type family is that you need to ensure that there needs to be at least 20% difference in colour to create a noticeable visual contrast. As such, you wouldn't combine ultra-thin with thin, or bold with semi-bold, because well, they're almost twinsies. They should each be separate entities that can be differentiated at a glance.

What are some of your favourite pairings?

Grids and Geometry: Fine Art Principles Applied to Graphic Design

We've published posts before in which we extolled the virtues of creating grids for graphic design projects, and it occurred to us that it might be fun to revisit that topic every so often to illustrate (no pun intended, really...) our design process, and the planning/thinking that go into our creations. In today's post, we're going to look at a few of the two-page photo spreads that we created for the last Paradise City USA lookbook as examples of how we use grid and mathematical ratio systems, and why.

As you can see, there are several underlying geometry and grid structures aligning the subjects within the images.

So... why do we use these to lay out our designs instead of just winging it and placing images and type by eye? In two words: balance, and precision.

In the same way that people's eyes are naturally drawn to symmetrical faces (right from infancy at that!), we innately find well-balanced artwork to be aesthetically pleasing. This doesn't mean that a piece has to be perfectly symmetrical, but rather that it should conform to an underlying geometric layout. By using grids, baselines, and regularly spaced divisions, we can create pieces that are appealing to both the eye and the psyche, which is what fine artists have been doing for centuries.

Above: Botticelli's "Birth of Venus". You can see that the piece has been divided into thirds, and that a spot above Venus's head is used as the focal point. From there, lines radiate outward to delineate limb placement, such as aligning the right-hand female figure's nose and shoulder, while her hands and feet are on another line. 

Then there's the flying Zephyr guy and friend on the left. See how the male figure's toe lines up with the angle created by the bottom of the shell? Or how his girlfriend's knee is on the same line as the male's thumb and the right-hand figure's ankle? If we were to add even more geometric lines on here, you'd notice that even the flowers connect on vertices: everything has been placed carefully, with a solid plan, rather than just being slapped on haphazardly.

Above: "Christ Healing the Blind", attributed to El Greco

This may be one of El Greco's variations on the "Christ Healing the Blind" theme, but it's also been attributed to other artists, so we're not entire sure who created it. Whoever painted it, this section of the larger painting also shows how underlying geometry is used to create balance and harmony in a piece. It's divided horizontally into fourths (vertically as well, though we refrained from adding more lines to the image), with an additional smaller section acting as a grounding area. 

Although the Christ figure is front and centre as the main focal character, and there are alignments in the other characters that meet up with the point at the top of his head, the primary geometric forms here seem to be drawn from the upper left and upper right, the latter likely referring to divine nature, the heavens, etc.

You can see how one line flows across the top of Christ's head, along the eye-line of the figure behind him, to the hand of the figure at left. Similarly, another line from the upper left goes across the pale man's hand, through the bicep of the bare-chested one, back across pale guy's hip, and down to the heel of his angled foot. Nothing is placed without thought, plan, or harmony.

It's not just classic art that uses this kind of divisional structure—take a look at this piece by contemporary artist Mark Lang:

...and now check out his sketch of the underlying geometry in the piece:

Can you see the geometry in the painting after looking at its grid structure?

When objects in art pieces, be they paintings or graphics, are planned with careful consideration, they exist harmoniously. Text is balanced by white space, and sits firmly on established baselines. 

Above: An example from the book Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition, by Kimberly Elam.

As we've mentioned before, there's a startling amount of freedom in restriction, so to speak: when you have an established grid and mathematical relationship structure to work within, a lot of the guesswork is removed with regard to where colour boundaries should be placed, where to set the type, and where complementary assets can be popped in without causing conflict in the piece.

Here's an album cover that we created for La Famiglia Recordings:

...and here's an animated GIF showing the different geometric layers within it:

In this particular case, we used the same grid and geometry that we've used for other La Famiglia assets to create a sense of continuity. Posters, flyers, and now the album cover as well, have all been created with the same proportions and divisions so they all live in the same world.

Not every design requires diligent planning and a painstaking setup; sometimes, simplicity is key, and just adhering to a rule of thirds, or working within two columns can work wonders. Ultimately, the key is to design conscientiously, with solid intent. This is invaluable when a client asks why X asset can't be bigger, or shunted off to the left or whatnot: it's where it is because that's where it needs to be for everything to flow perfectly.