Montserrat is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Julieta Ulanovsky. This typeface to rescue the beauty of urban typography that emerged in the first half of the twentieth century. The old posters and signs in the Montserrat neighborhood of Buenos Aires inspired her. As urban development changes that place, it will never return to its original form and loses forever the designs that are so special and unique. The letters that inspired this project have work, dedication, care, color, contrast, light and life, day and night! These are the types that make the city look so beautiful.
Montserrat has gained popularity as a free alternative to other similar sans-serif fonts, such as Gotham or Avenir. Its high readability and ease of scaling make it a good choice for printed material, such as brochures, signage, and books.
Montserrat Font Combinations
How can we find a good font match for Montserrat?
First thing to consider is contrast. Montserrat is a sans-serif font and there is no good reason to pair it with other sans-serif fonts. For contrast the best option is pairing with similar Serif fonts.
Other thing to consider:
x-height: The distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface is called the x-height. Montserrat has high x-height so the best combination are Serif fonts with high x-height.
Apertures: An aperture is an opening in a letter form or a symbol.
Axis: The axis is an imaginary line drawn from top to bottom of a glyph that bisects the upper and lower strokes.
Letter forms comparison.
Montserrat and Noto Serif Pairing
Noto is a font family that provides complete coverage for all modern and ancient scripts. Noto Serif is a modulated (“serif”) design specifically for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts, and can also be used as a complementary font for scripts with specific design needs. It has italic styles, multiple weights and widths, and 3,256 glyphs.
Noto Serif is probably the best font match for Montserrat. They have almost identical x-height and similar letter forms and apertures. Noto Serif can be used for the main text and Montserrat for the headings. Because of the good readability of Montserrat they can switch places and Montserrat can be used for the main body text and Noto Serif can be used for the title (headings).
Montserrat and Merriweather Pairing
Merriweather was designed to be a text face that is pleasant to read on screens. It has a large x height, slightly condensed letterforms, a mild diagonal stress, sturdy serifs, and open forms.
Merriweather also has a large x-height and is a great match for Montserrat. The letter forms and the apertures have similar properties. Merriweather can be used for the headings but also for the main text.
Montserrat and Playfair Display Pairing
Playfair Display is a transitional design. In the European Enlightenment in the late 18th century, broad nib quills were replaced by pointed steel pens as the popular writing tool of the day.
Together with developments in printing technology, ink, and paper making, it became to print letterforms of high contrast and delicate hairlines that were increasingly detached from the written letterforms.
This design lends itself to this period, and while it is not a revival of any particular design, it takes influence from the designs of John Baskerville and from ‘Scotch Roman’ designs. Being a Display (large size) design in the transitional genre, functionally and stylistically it can accompany Georgia for body text.
Montserrat and Literata Pairing
Literata is a distinct variable font family for digital text. Originally created as the brand typeface for Google Play Books, it exceeds the strict needs of a comfortable reading experience on any device, screen resolution, or font size. The family has matured into a full-fledged digital publishing toolbox — headline, paragraph, and caption text.
Montserrat and Bitter Pairing
Bitter is a “contemporary” slab serif typeface for text, it is specially designed for comfortably reading on any computer or device. The robust design started from the austerity of the pixel grid, based on rational rather than emotional principles. It combines the large x-heights and legibility of the humanistic tradition with subtle characteristics in the characters that inject a certain rhythm to flowing texts.
Bitter has little variation in stroke weight and the Regular is thicker than a normal ‘Regular’ style for print design. This generates an intense color in paragraphs, accentuated by the serifs that are as thick as strokes with square terminals.
Each glyph is carefully designed with an excellent curve quality added to the first stage of the design, that was entirely made in a pixel grid. The typeface is balanced and manually spaced to use very few kerning pairs, especially important for web font use since most browsers do not currently support this feature.
Bitter also pairs great with Montserrat. It has similar x-height and similar letter forms.
Montserrat and Robot Serif Pairing
Roboto Serif is a variable typeface family that has been designed to create a comfortable and frictionless reading experience. It is useful in a wide range of media due to the extensive set of weights and widths across a broad range of optical sizes. While it was carefully crafted to work well in digital media, across the full scope of sizes and resolutions we have today, it is just as comfortable to read and work in print media.
Montserrat and Georgia Font Pairings
Georgia is a typeface with a lot of personality. Even at small sizes, it comes across as friendly and intimate, which is something that many people argue has been lost with Times New Roman. This is thanks to both the skill of the typeface’s designer, Matthew Carter, and to any intrinsic quality of the face’s design. Since the small pixel spaces of screens can be difficult to work with, Carter has succeeded in creating a typeface family that is both highly legible and charming.
Montserrat and PT Serif Pairings
PT Serif is a transitional serif typeface with humanistic terminals. It is designed for use together with PT Sans, and is harmonized across metrics, proportions, weights and design. The fonts include standard Western, Central European and Cyrillic code pages, plus the characters of every title language in the Russian Federation. This makes them an important tool for modern digital communications.
Montserrat and Lora Font Pairing
Lora is a well-balanced contemporary serif with roots in calligraphy. It is a text typeface with moderate contrast well suited for body text. Technically Lora is optimised for screen appearance, and works equally well in print.
A paragraph set in Lora will make a memorable appearance because of its brushed curves in contrast with driving serifs. The overall typographic voice of Lora perfectly conveys the mood of a modern-day story, or an art essay.
