From the course: Typography: Choosing and Combining Typefaces

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The rule of three typefaces: Using serif, sans serif, and slab serif

The rule of three typefaces: Using serif, sans serif, and slab serif

From the course: Typography: Choosing and Combining Typefaces

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The rule of three typefaces: Using serif, sans serif, and slab serif

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Conventional design wisdom can often be a good thing. And conventional wisdom tell us, that even the most complex projects require no more than three typefaces. Or more preciously, three type families. Almost, all situations can be handled with three good compatible choices. Generally, you'll need a legible serif family for body copy, a basic san serif family for contrast and a slab serif or other display face for variety and special uses. Magazines are among the most typographically complex projects. They often have hundreds of pages so they need the variety that the rule of three can provide. I'm going to show you some great examples of how the rule of three works in the magazine environment. First, let's look at a typically text-heavy feature story. Minion is used as a serious legible type face for the body copy. Hoefler Text and Swash are used for the intro paragraph and for the text of the side bar. Knockout is used for the dates and also as a narrow thumb strip at the far left…

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