Stop Using Open Sans: A Masterclass in Font Pairing

I used to spend hours on color palettes. Adjusting a hex code by 2% saturation, convinced it would make or break the design.

It didn't.

Then one day, I swapped the font from Open Sans to Outfit. Same colors. Same layout. Suddenly, my generic landing page looked like a Y Combinator startup.

Typography is 90% of design. I'm serious. If your fonts are boring, your site is boring.

Why Open Sans Has to Go

Look, Open Sans is fine. It's legible. It renders well on Windows.

But here is the problem: it's everywhere.

Every WordPress theme. Every Squarespace template. Every "I watched a YouTube tutorial" portfolio.

When you use Open Sans, you're not making a design choice. You're opting out of one.

The Rule: Contrast, Not Matching

Bad designers try to find fonts that "go together."

Good designers find fonts that fight each other in a controlled way.

You want tension:

• Serif headers + Sans-serif body. The classic. Think Merriweather for titles and Inter for paragraphs.
• Thick headers + Thin body. Use a Weight 800 display font and a Weight 300 text font.
• Loud + Quiet. One font screams. One font whispers.

If your two fonts look like siblings, the combo is boring. If they look like rivals, you're onto something.

The "Vibe Check" Before You Commit

Before picking a font, ask: What am I selling?

• Building a SaaS dashboard? You need something clean and modern. Inter. Plus Jakarta Sans.
• Running a bakery? You need warmth. Fraunces. Lora.
• Personal portfolio? You need personality. Space Grotesk. Syne.

Using Inter for an artisanal coffee shop looks sterile.

Using Playfair Display for a data analytics tool looks pretentious.

I Cheat (And So Should You)

I don't have these pairings memorized. My brain is too full of debugging useEffect dependency arrays.

So I cheat.

I built the Axonix Font Pairer to solve this exact problem.

It generates random pairings based on contrast rules. Header + Body. Display + Text. You click a button until something clicks in your brain.

It's faster than downloading five Google Fonts and refreshing localhost over and over.

Three Pairings I Actually Use

If you don't want to experiment, steal these:

1. Modern Tech: Outfit (headers) + Inter (body). Clean, geometric, friendly.
2. Editorial: Libre Baskerville (headers) + Source Sans 3 (body). Trustworthy. Academic.
3. Brutalist: Space Mono (headers) + Work Sans (body). Ugly-beautiful.

One Last Thing

Delete the import { Open_Sans } from your next/font config.

Go to the Font Pairer.

Hit the spacebar a few times.

Pick something that actually has a pulse.

Pro Tip: Variable Fonts Are Free

Google Fonts now has variable fonts. That means a single font file can go from Weight 100 to Weight 900. You get an entire font family for the price of one file. Use wght in your CSS and stop downloading 6 separate font files. Your Lighthouse score will thank you.

Your design will thank you.