TYPEMATCHSEO
Launch

TYPEMATCH.

V2.1

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

Balancing Martel with Niconne

Build a contrast-first system where Martel leads and Niconne keeps long-form content legible.

Display Face

Martel

Weight: 700

Body Face

Niconne

Weight: 400

This pairing is engineered for teams that need a clear hierarchy without sacrificing brand voice. Martel brings devanagari, slab, reading energy to hero units, pricing sections, and campaign headlines. Niconne absorbs the heavy lifting for paragraphs, product storytelling, and UI labels with its vintage, script, retro 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 Martel with Niconne

Build a contrast-first system where Martel leads and Niconne keeps long-form content legible.

This pairing is engineered for teams that need a clear hierarchy without sacrificing brand voice. Martel brings devanagari, slab, reading energy to hero units, pricing sections, and campaign headlines. Niconne absorbs the heavy lifting for paragraphs, product storytelling, and UI labels with its vintage, script, retro 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.

Martel thrives as a headline face thanks to its devanagari, slab, reading qualities. Use weights 700–900 for crisp editorial lockups.
Niconne excels in paragraphs and UI thanks to its vintage, script, retro traits. Keep it between weights 400–600 for optimal readability.
Hierarchy guidance: run a 1:1.4 modular scale and reserve Martel for H1–H3 while Niconne powers captions, body copy, and data tables.

Best-Fit Use Cases

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

Accessibility Notes

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

CSS Implementation Cheatsheet

:root {
  --tm-header-family: 'Martel', serif;
  --tm-body-family: 'Niconne', handwriting;
  --tm-header-weight: 700;
  --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 Martel at 700 for momentum, while forms, tables, and footnotes stay on Niconne with 400 weight for predictable kerning.

FAQs

Why does Martel make sense as the lead font?

Martel owns the emotional register of this system. Its devanagari, slab, reading profile helps anchor campaign creative, meaning marketing and product teams can reuse the same voice without reinventing the scale.

Where should Niconne show up?

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