TYPEMATCHSEO
Launch

TYPEMATCH.

V2.1

Browse Directory
700
400
PAIRING ID: LOB-SPE // ETHOS: DISPLAY + DISPLAY

Systematizing Lobster & Special Elite

Anchor the expressive personality of Lobster with the utilitarian clarity of Special Elite.

Display Face

Lobster

Weight: 700

Body Face

Special Elite

Weight: 400

This pairing is engineered for teams that need a clear hierarchy without sacrificing brand voice. Lobster brings script, bold, retro energy to hero units, pricing sections, and campaign headlines. Special Elite absorbs the heavy lifting for paragraphs, product storytelling, and UI labels with its typewriter, grunge, vintage 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

Systematizing Lobster & Special Elite

Anchor the expressive personality of Lobster with the utilitarian clarity of Special Elite.

This pairing is engineered for teams that need a clear hierarchy without sacrificing brand voice. Lobster brings script, bold, retro energy to hero units, pricing sections, and campaign headlines. Special Elite absorbs the heavy lifting for paragraphs, product storytelling, and UI labels with its typewriter, grunge, vintage 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.

Lobster thrives as a headline face thanks to its script, bold, retro qualities. Use weights 400–600 for crisp editorial lockups.
Special Elite excels in paragraphs and UI thanks to its typewriter, grunge, vintage traits. Keep it between weights 400–600 for optimal readability.
Hierarchy guidance: run a 1:1.2 modular scale and reserve Lobster for H1–H3 while Special Elite powers captions, body copy, and data tables.

Best-Fit Use Cases

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

Accessibility Notes

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

CSS Implementation Cheatsheet

:root {
  --tm-header-family: 'Lobster', display;
  --tm-body-family: 'Special Elite', display;
  --tm-header-weight: 400;
  --tm-body-weight: 400;
  --tm-header-tracking: -0.04em;
  --tm-body-tracking: -0.005em;
}
Heading scale: clamp(2.75rem, 3.6vw, 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 Lobster at 400 for momentum, while forms, tables, and footnotes stay on Special Elite with 400 weight for predictable kerning.

FAQs

Why does Lobster make sense as the lead font?

Lobster owns the emotional register of this system. Its script, bold, retro profile helps anchor campaign creative, meaning marketing and product teams can reuse the same voice without reinventing the scale.

Where should Special Elite show up?

Special Elite is the workhorse. Keep it in paragraphs, long-form editorial, knowledge bases, or anywhere legibility is non-negotiable. Its typewriter, grunge, vintage 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.