Inspired by vintage punch printers and the playful, ambient diffusing of light, OT Bulb from our sister foundry Off Type is a distinctive, unique outlier when it comes to type design and the normal, expected experience designers and their audiences have with type.
Its overlapping dots and Watt axis, ranging from 100 (dim) to 900 (bright), obscurely blend a sense of nostalgia with a fierce typographic modernity, ultimately feeling incredibly tactile, even within purely digital spaces.
With such a strong aesthetic, however, often it can be daunting to find the right font to pair it with. Helvetica is boring, Arial, Roboto and Times New Roman even more so! Let’s think outside the box a bit, and light your life up with some new pairings to add to your design toolkit. Here are our top font pairings for OT Bulb !
OT Bulb and Editorial Sans ↓
Editorial Sans ’s clean, modern lines offer an equally clean and similarly striking contrast to OT Bulb ’s eccentric, bulbous forms. While OT Bulb’s light leaks and bright variations can bring a playful energy to your design, Editorial Sans’s slender, contemporary style grounds the visual narrative with a sense of understated purpose and poise.
OT Bulb and Neue Montreal ↓
The new classic combo. Neue Montreal ’s versatile Grotesque structure complements OT Bulb ’s expressive aesthetic by offering a neutral yet compelling counterpoint. The tight kerning and balanced proportions of Neue Montreal provide a clear, timeless contrast to the OT Bulb’s exaggerated forms, crafting a combination that feels functional and effervescent, with plenty of personality and style, mixed with a little touch of weirdness (just how we like to do it at Off Type!).
OT Bulb and Editorial New ↓
Editorial New is a crowd-pleaser for a reason. With beautifully refined serifs offering a classy counterbalance to OT Bulb ’s rounded forms, the elegant, narrow design of Editorial New contrasts nicely with OT Bulb’s overlapping construction, creating a wonderfully harmonious blend of classic elegance and contemporary flair.
OT Bulb and Hatton ↓
With Hatton ’s recent Italic update, the pearlescent serif is now even more appropriate as a pairing with OT Bulb , offering versatility alongside its historical charm and detailed craftsmanship. Adding greater depth and character to the bright, often whimsical tone of OT Bulb, together, they create a dynamic interplay between something industrious and something debonair.
OT Bulb and PP Playground ↓
Why not go a bit mad? PP Playground and OT Bulb are both big, expressive fonts which, on paper, seem insane to combine together; however, in practice, the pair is uniquely atmospheric. PP Playground’s fluid, calligraphic form becomes an effective contrast to OT Bulb’s geometric and experimental construction, making a typographic duo that’s even more graphic than the sum of its parts. It’s not always minimalism that wins, and in this pairing, maximalism is sure to give your designs that extra bit of brightness you’re looking for.
All these fonts are free to try today, with licences starting at only $30. Don’t snooze!
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