What are best practices for choosing and pairing fonts?

Question

I've always found font selection to be a little bit of a mystery. What factors should be considered when choosing a font? How does one successfully incorporate two fonts into a design?I realize that some factors will include things like: - Legibility - Scalability - Appropriateness/Mood/EmotionHowever, how does one objectively judge legibility or appropriateness? Are there objective principles that can be applied for font selection? If possible, please list resources or examples in your answers. Studies focused on the effectiveness of different fonts would also be extremely useful.

Answer 1

There are two factors to consider when pairing fonts: proportion and contrast. Most times (that is, when you want fonts to complement each other and are not looking for crazy differences), the fonts that look best together have the same proportions. That means similar x-height and letter width (as in condensed or non-condensed. Take Futura and Georgia -- both have full, geometric letterforms, yet one is serif with thick and thin strokes, the other is an evenly-drawn sans serif. These two fonts go together.