TYPEMATCHSEO
Launch

TYPEMATCH.

V2.1

Browse Directory
700
400
PAIRING ID: BAD-MAR // ETHOS: HANDWRITING + SERIF

Balancing Bad Script with Martel

Anchor the expressive personality of Bad Script with the utilitarian clarity of Martel.

Display Face

Bad Script

Weight: 700

Body Face

Martel

Weight: 400

This pairing is engineered for teams that need a clear hierarchy without sacrificing brand voice. Bad Script brings casual, messy, handwritten energy to hero units, pricing sections, and campaign headlines. Martel absorbs the heavy lifting for paragraphs, product storytelling, and UI labels with its devanagari, slab, reading texture and dependable rhythm. Together they create a typography stack that scales from high-impact landing pages to dense documentation without retooling your CSS tokens.

Typographic Hierarchy & Scale

H1The Quick Fox
H2The Quick Fox
H3The Quick Fox
PThe quick brown fox jumps over...
Dark Context
Aa

High contrast negative space.

Accent
Gg

Legibility on high-chroma.

Pairing Strategy

Balancing Bad Script with Martel

Anchor the expressive personality of Bad Script with the utilitarian clarity of Martel.

This pairing is engineered for teams that need a clear hierarchy without sacrificing brand voice. Bad Script brings casual, messy, handwritten energy to hero units, pricing sections, and campaign headlines. Martel absorbs the heavy lifting for paragraphs, product storytelling, and UI labels with its devanagari, slab, reading texture and dependable rhythm. Together they create a typography stack that scales from high-impact landing pages to dense documentation without retooling your CSS tokens.

Bad Script thrives as a headline face thanks to its casual, messy, handwritten qualities. Use weights 400–600 for crisp editorial lockups.
Martel excels in paragraphs and UI thanks to its devanagari, slab, reading traits. Keep it between weights 400–600 for optimal readability.
Hierarchy guidance: run a 1:1.4 modular scale and reserve Bad Script for H1–H3 while Martel powers captions, body copy, and data tables.

Best-Fit Use Cases

  • High-growth SaaS landing pages that require casual hero statements with trustworthy product copy.
  • Editorial magazines and thought-leadership hubs where Bad Script can dramatize pull quotes while Martel keeps 1,500-word essays skimmable.
  • Conversion funnels or onboarding flows that need Martel's devanagari voice to balance Bad Script's attention-grabbing display.

Accessibility Notes

Maintain a minimum 4.5:1 contrast ratio for Martel body copy and loosen letter-spacing to 0.01em for uppercase Bad Script moments. Pairing different categories demands disciplined color pairing—test both light and dark themes to ensure Martel does not bloom at small sizes.

CSS Implementation Cheatsheet

:root {
  --tm-header-family: 'Bad Script', handwriting;
  --tm-body-family: 'Martel', serif;
  --tm-header-weight: 400;
  --tm-body-weight: 400;
  --tm-header-tracking: -0.04em;
  --tm-body-tracking: 0em;
}
Heading scale: clamp(2.75rem, 4.5vw, 5.25rem) for H1, clamp(1.5rem, 2.8vw, 3rem) for H2, and keep paragraph size at 1rem–1.125rem with 1.6 line-height.
Component guidance: Buttons inherit Bad Script at 400 for momentum, while forms, tables, and footnotes stay on Martel with 400 weight for predictable kerning.

FAQs

Why does Bad Script make sense as the lead font?

Bad Script owns the emotional register of this system. Its casual, messy, handwritten profile helps anchor campaign creative, meaning marketing and product teams can reuse the same voice without reinventing the scale.

Where should Martel show up?

Martel is the workhorse. Keep it in paragraphs, long-form editorial, knowledge bases, or anywhere legibility is non-negotiable. Its devanagari, slab, reading qualities reduce fatigue on dense layouts.

Does this pairing support complex localization?

Yes—both families are available on Google Fonts with generous glyph coverage. Test cyrillic/latin accents early, but most Latin-based locales and UI patterns are fully supported.