When it comes to designing your Shopify store, typography is a big deal - the fonts you choose for your site are just as crucial for your brand’s identity as your colour palette and overall voice. It can be a bit tricky to get it right, but fear not! Our awesome design team has got your back. They’ve put together some super helpful tips to make the whole process a breeze. Plus, they’ve even handpicked some fantastic font combinations that are available directly in your theme editor!
Why is typography so important?
Typography contributes to the way a visitor reads and understands the content on your website. It creates a hierarchy that smoothly leads them through the page by differentiating between various sections and calling attention to important messaging.
Think of font pairings like the dynamic duos of the web font world. It’s all about finding two fonts that either complement each other to create a seamless and cohesive look, or finding fonts that play off each other with contrast to make certain elements of your typography pop.
Combos we’re loving
Your Shopify theme comes with a built-in font library of hundreds of fonts that are completely free to use - you can find the [full list here] - but we know that can get overwhelming fast. So our design team has put together a list of their top recommendations for bringing your content to life!
Poppins + Inconsolata
Poppins is a geometric sans serif that is round and friendly. It pairs very nicely with a lot of fonts (seriously, this is one of Google Fonts bests!) but we particularly like pairing it with a monospace typeface like Inconsolata. Inconsolata is rather narrow and its monospace and serif nature balances out the round forms in Poppins while adding some visual interest without impeding readability.
Josefin Sans Bold + Josefin Sans
This may not be the most revolutionary of pairings, but it’s a great case of, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” When in doubt, try using the same font for your heading and body copy but in different weights to add and define some hierarchy. Josefin Sans has a bit of a quirky personality with a vintage touch, and we think it would shine on stores that sell small-batch food or beverage products or quirky kitchen products.
Tenor Sans + IBM Plex Sans
Tenor Sans is an elegant typeface that is subtly stylistic, it would be a wonderful addition to a store selling curated home goods, beauty products, or anything with a more sophisticated tone of voice. To balance out the round forms of Tenor, we’ve paired it with IBM Plex Sans. It is a narrower typeface that works well in a range of small sizes.
Cardo + Alegreya Sans
Cardo is one of Google Fonts’ more contemporary serif typefaces, which works great for headers and equally as well when sized down. Alegreya Sans has a calligraphic feeling with consistent angles and rhythm that pairs very nicely with an angular serif header font like Cardo and supports its sophisticated nature.
Oswald Regular + Inter
Oswald is a condensed font that works really well in all caps for headers — it truly packs a punch. Being so bold on its own, we like pairing it with an unassuming sans serif body font like Inter which allows Oswald to take the full spotlight and lets Inter do what it does best — communicate.
When it works, it works
Check out these shops designed by our merchants who are doing it right:
- Good Ritual
- Brockton Gems
- Atone
- La Porte
Can I use custom fonts for my online store?
With some customisation to your theme’s code, you can absolutely choose to use a custom font. We always recommend considering one of the hundreds of fonts in Shopify’s Font Picker as your first choice, since they are fully supported by all our themes and won’t affect your site performance, but you can find a handy [guide here] to help get you started with installing custom fonts. Please note, however, that this is a customisation that is outside the scope of our free theme support.
