Didot: the fashion magazine font, and a free alternative

High contrast French type, and the look of fashion magazines.

In use, with Lato

Edit the words to try your own. The pairing tool has more body fonts.

History

• The Didot family of French printers developed their best-known faces between 1784 and 1811. Firmin Didot cut and cast the type in Paris and his brother Pierre printed with it.[1]
• Linotype Didot, drawn by Adrian Frutiger, comes with macOS.[1]

Who uses it

• Vogue covers, used many times from the 1940s and permanent from 1955[1]
• Harper's Bazaar, under art director Alexey Brodovitch[1]
• CBS, with its own CBS Didot[1]
• Zara's 2019 logo, a tightly kerned Didot[1]

Sources

1. 1. Wikipedia: Didot (typeface)

The free alternative

GFS Didot is a free Didot from the Greek Font Society, with the same hairline serifs and vertical stress.

Body fonts that go with GFS Didot:

• LatoA low-contrast sans lets the hairlines of the heading be the only drama.
• KarlaSmall and plain, the way magazines set captions under big Didone titles.
• Crimson ProAn old-style serif with gentler contrast that holds up at text sizes where Didot breaks down.

Other fonts

• TrajanRoman inscription capitals, and the movie poster font.
• HelveticaThe Swiss sans that ended up on subway signs and airline logos.
• ArialDrawn to the same widths as Helvetica, shipped with Windows.
• FuturaThe 1927 geometric sans of circles and straight lines.
• GothamWide geometric capitals taken from New York building signs.
• ImpactA 1965 Sheffield display face that became the meme font.
• GaramondSixteenth century Paris type, revived many times since.
• Times New RomanMade for a London newspaper in 1932, then shipped with Windows.
• BaskervilleA Birmingham printer’s sharper, lighter serif from the 1750s.
• Comic SansDrawn in 1994 for the speech bubbles in Microsoft Bob.
• CourierAn IBM typewriter face that screenplays never gave up.
• RobotoGoogle's Android system font since 2011.