Just used 6 different fonts in one poster design - what a trainwreck lol

I was designing a flyer for my cousin's garage sale in Austin last weekend and thought I'd get creative with the fonts. Ended up mixing a script, a slab serif, two sans-serifs, a display font, and some janky handwritten one - looked like a ransom note had a baby with a cereal box. Showed it to my buddy who does graphic design and he laughed for a solid 2 minutes before telling me to stick with max 2 fonts. Has anyone else gone overboard like this and had to scrap the whole thing?

2 comments

2 Comments

fiona_nelson518d ago

Ransom note had a baby with a cereal box" is basically the perfect description of what happens when you go wild with fonts. I gotta say though, you mentioned a slab serif and a script together, and those two can actually work if you keep everything else real simple. It's the six fonts at once that's the problem, not necessarily the combo itself. I did a flyer for my book club once with four different fonts and it looked like a math problem gone wrong. Sticking to two fonts is solid advice, but three can work if one is just for like a single big word or something.

mitchell.shane8d ago

Yeah but I gotta push back on that, @fiona_nelson51. You say three can work if one is just for a big word, but that's how the dominoes start falling. Next thing you know you got a script for the title, a slab for the body, a sans for the subhead, and then you throw in a decorative one for a pull quote because it "feels right." I've seen it happen more times than I can count. A single display font for that big word is still a third font, and most people can't resist making it do too much work.