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PAIRING ID: IBM-GRA // ETHOS: SANS-SERIF + HANDWRITING

Balancing IBM Plex Sans with Grand Hotel

Build a contrast-first system where IBM Plex Sans leads and Grand Hotel keeps long-form content legible.

Display Face

IBM Plex Sans

Weight: 700

Body Face

Grand Hotel

Weight: 400

This pairing is engineered for teams that need a clear hierarchy without sacrificing brand voice. IBM Plex Sans brings corporate, neutral, humanist energy to hero units, pricing sections, and campaign headlines. Grand Hotel absorbs the heavy lifting for paragraphs, product storytelling, and UI labels with its vintage, script, hotel 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 IBM Plex Sans with Grand Hotel

Build a contrast-first system where IBM Plex Sans leads and Grand Hotel keeps long-form content legible.

This pairing is engineered for teams that need a clear hierarchy without sacrificing brand voice. IBM Plex Sans brings corporate, neutral, humanist energy to hero units, pricing sections, and campaign headlines. Grand Hotel absorbs the heavy lifting for paragraphs, product storytelling, and UI labels with its vintage, script, hotel 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.

IBM Plex Sans thrives as a headline face thanks to its corporate, neutral, humanist qualities. Use weights 600–800 for crisp editorial lockups.
Grand Hotel excels in paragraphs and UI thanks to its vintage, script, hotel traits. Keep it between weights 400–600 for optimal readability.
Hierarchy guidance: run a 1:1.4 modular scale and reserve IBM Plex Sans for H1–H3 while Grand Hotel powers captions, body copy, and data tables.

Best-Fit Use Cases

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

Accessibility Notes

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

CSS Implementation Cheatsheet

:root {
  --tm-header-family: 'IBM Plex Sans', sans-serif;
  --tm-body-family: 'Grand Hotel', handwriting;
  --tm-header-weight: 600;
  --tm-body-weight: 400;
  --tm-header-tracking: -0.01em;
  --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 IBM Plex Sans at 600 for momentum, while forms, tables, and footnotes stay on Grand Hotel with 400 weight for predictable kerning.

FAQs

Why does IBM Plex Sans make sense as the lead font?

IBM Plex Sans owns the emotional register of this system. Its corporate, neutral, humanist profile helps anchor campaign creative, meaning marketing and product teams can reuse the same voice without reinventing the scale.

Where should Grand Hotel show up?

Grand Hotel is the workhorse. Keep it in paragraphs, long-form editorial, knowledge bases, or anywhere legibility is non-negotiable. Its vintage, script, hotel 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.