TYPEMATCHSEO
Launch

TYPEMATCH.

V2.1

Browse Directory
700
400
PAIRING ID: SPE-HAN // ETHOS: DISPLAY + SANS-SERIF

Balancing Special Elite with Hanken Grotesk

Anchor the expressive personality of Special Elite with the utilitarian clarity of Hanken Grotesk.

Display Face

Special Elite

Weight: 700

Body Face

Hanken Grotesk

Weight: 400

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

Anchor the expressive personality of Special Elite with the utilitarian clarity of Hanken Grotesk.

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

Special Elite thrives as a headline face thanks to its typewriter, grunge, vintage qualities. Use weights 400–600 for crisp editorial lockups.
Hanken Grotesk excels in paragraphs and UI thanks to its grotesque, clean, neutral traits. Keep it between weights 400–600 for optimal readability.
Hierarchy guidance: run a 1:1.4 modular scale and reserve Special Elite for H1–H3 while Hanken Grotesk powers captions, body copy, and data tables.

Best-Fit Use Cases

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

Accessibility Notes

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

CSS Implementation Cheatsheet

:root {
  --tm-header-family: 'Special Elite', display;
  --tm-body-family: 'Hanken Grotesk', sans-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 Special Elite at 400 for momentum, while forms, tables, and footnotes stay on Hanken Grotesk with 400 weight for predictable kerning.

FAQs

Why does Special Elite make sense as the lead font?

Special Elite owns the emotional register of this system. Its typewriter, grunge, vintage profile helps anchor campaign creative, meaning marketing and product teams can reuse the same voice without reinventing the scale.

Where should Hanken Grotesk show up?

Hanken Grotesk is the workhorse. Keep it in paragraphs, long-form editorial, knowledge bases, or anywhere legibility is non-negotiable. Its grotesque, clean, neutral 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.