TYPEMATCHSEO
Launch

TYPEMATCH.

V2.1

Browse Directory
700
400
PAIRING ID: WOR-MAR // ETHOS: SANS-SERIF + SERIF

Balancing Work Sans with Marcellus

Build a contrast-first system where Work Sans leads and Marcellus keeps long-form content legible.

Display Face

Work Sans

Weight: 700

Body Face

Marcellus

Weight: 400

This pairing is engineered for teams that need a clear hierarchy without sacrificing brand voice. Work Sans brings grotesque, optimized, screen-ready energy to hero units, pricing sections, and campaign headlines. Marcellus absorbs the heavy lifting for paragraphs, product storytelling, and UI labels with its flared, roman, classic 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 Work Sans with Marcellus

Build a contrast-first system where Work Sans leads and Marcellus keeps long-form content legible.

This pairing is engineered for teams that need a clear hierarchy without sacrificing brand voice. Work Sans brings grotesque, optimized, screen-ready energy to hero units, pricing sections, and campaign headlines. Marcellus absorbs the heavy lifting for paragraphs, product storytelling, and UI labels with its flared, roman, classic 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.

Work Sans thrives as a headline face thanks to its grotesque, optimized, screen-ready qualities. Use weights 600–800 for crisp editorial lockups.
Marcellus excels in paragraphs and UI thanks to its flared, roman, classic traits. Keep it between weights 400–600 for optimal readability.
Hierarchy guidance: run a 1:1.4 modular scale and reserve Work Sans for H1–H3 while Marcellus powers captions, body copy, and data tables.

Best-Fit Use Cases

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

Accessibility Notes

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

CSS Implementation Cheatsheet

:root {
  --tm-header-family: 'Work Sans', sans-serif;
  --tm-body-family: 'Marcellus', serif;
  --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 Work Sans at 600 for momentum, while forms, tables, and footnotes stay on Marcellus with 400 weight for predictable kerning.

FAQs

Why does Work Sans make sense as the lead font?

Work Sans owns the emotional register of this system. Its grotesque, optimized, screen-ready profile helps anchor campaign creative, meaning marketing and product teams can reuse the same voice without reinventing the scale.

Where should Marcellus show up?

Marcellus is the workhorse. Keep it in paragraphs, long-form editorial, knowledge bases, or anywhere legibility is non-negotiable. Its flared, roman, classic 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.