I am joined by the lovely author and typography professor Indra Kupferschmid to chat about type classification and combining typefaces. We cover why the old systems don’t work, and touch on a font matrix. It’s a brilliant way by Indra, that tells you how to describe typefaces differently, and helps in making better decision in pairing them.

Besides that, Indra also shares:

➡️ how calligraphy taught her why letter forms change when using different writing tools.

➡️ that her student’s don’t feel that intimidated by combining fonts.

➡️ why popular typefaces like Roboto and Inter work so well and still might stick around for some years.

Talking points:

00:00 – Introduction

04:36 – Greeting to Indra Kupferschmid

05:36 – Avoid flipped apostrophes (should look like a 9)

08:01 – Consistent typography makes text easier to understand

11:44 – Categorizing typefaces

16:23 – About historic type classifications

20:07 – Why the old type classification models don’t work

22:31 – Filtering Fonts to make it easier to pick one

25:55 – Filtering based on features

27:54 – Terminology is the biggest problem, better describe what you see

28:59 – The Font Matrix

38:04 – Creating contrast

39:50 – Don’t use too light typefaces for body text

43:23 – Why are Roboto and Inter so popular for UI design?

48:25 – Why there are so little serif typefaces on screen?

53:59 – Are more typefaces now shown than images?

56:03 – Rapid Round of questions

58:32 – Goodbye

🤩 Pairing Typefaces Like a Pro, Online Course:

https://pimpmytype.com/course

🔗 Visuals, Links, and quotables to this episode:

https://pimpmytype.com/talk02