NOTATIO

Hello Everyone,
I'm trying to develop a personal House style regarding fonts, just to learn what could work and what not.
I'm currently on Dorico, and for the non-musical text I use Minion Pro. I'm really satisfied with that, and I like to fine tune all the parameters As I learn new things about Engraving. But I would like to pair minion pro with tho other fonts, using this criteria:

1. Minion Pro: lyrics, staff labels, instructions, credits, page numbers etc..
2. A Sans Serif Font: I would use it for all the pages before the music ones (general infos, legend, performance notes, etc.)
3. Another Serif Font: I would use that for titling and dedication (front matter, first page. etc.). I was thinking about Requiem Font (https://www.typography.com/fonts/requiem/overview)

Do you think it's a good idea or are there more professional and correcxt ways to pair fonts? Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

I personally don't like most standard text fonts because they have too much contrast between their thin and thick strokes.  The music text should remain highly legible from a distance.  It shouldn't begin to disappear at 12pt from just one meter away, or even more.

For that reason, I embolden all fonts manually so that they feel more "inky" or "fat" on the page.

I did this with Minion Pro, creating a fork called Minion Music.  I did the same with Times New Roman, creating Muzitex, and with Old Standard, creating Old Music Standard.  Nowadays I use CMU bold for all tempi.

Particularly Old Music Standard has very similar p, m, f, z, s to the music symbols.  And that is important.

Standard Sibelius:
Wolfgang + OMS:

OCTO wrote: 30 Jun 2026, 19:01 For that reason, I embolden all fonts manually so that they feel more "inky" or "fat" on the page.

When making a Bold version of a font, you have to be careful that you're not making it less legible by turning all the strokes into fat sausages, and reducing the white space between serifs and stems. That can happen if you automatically thicken everything, and that seems to be happening in your OMS example.

Bolder fonts need to be wider, in order to counteract the sausage effect, allowing more space for fatter strokes. You still need contrast between thin strokes and thicker ones. See how the serif on the p dynamic is still thin, compared to your letter p. Same for the counter, which has thick and thin parts, whereas yours is equally thick.

AndreLorenzatti wrote: 30 Jun 2026, 14:27 Do you think it's a good idea or are there more professional and correct ways to pair fonts? Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

Pairing fonts is like pairing wine with food. Firstly, Minion Pro covers something like 68 different styles: Condensed, SemiBold, and various optical sizes, so there a lot of decisions there about which Minion styles you're using, and for what.

AndreLorenzatti wrote: 30 Jun 2026, 14:27 2. A Sans Serif Font: I would use it for all the pages before the music ones (general infos, legend, performance notes, etc.)

The question, of course, is which Sans font works well with Minion; and how? Myriad Pro is Adobe's own "match" for Minion. News Gothic or Trade Gothic would also work well.

If your performance notes are paragraphs of body text, then why not use Minion there, too? Save the Sans font for headings and titles. A Bold, slightly Condensed Geometric sans typeface would be a good counterpoint to the text. Perhaps with a bit of letterspacing.

AndreLorenzatti wrote: 30 Jun 2026, 14:27 I was thinking about Requiem Font

That's a very stylish font for titling, but it's another Humanist design. (Minion isn't quite a 'revival' of a Renaissance type, but it's clearly inspired by.)

Some of the best designs use only one typeface (in a number of sizes and weights). There's a myth of one design agency that always and only uses Helvetica for all their work. But how they use it, is what they get paid for. (It's not entirely true, of course.)

i am still faithful to my own developed font inspired by nepomuk for all the Dynamics to give that vintage look

AndreLorenzatti wrote: 30 Jun 2026, 14:27 Hello Everyone,
I'm trying to develop a personal House style regarding fonts, just to learn what could work and what not.
I'm currently on Dorico, and for the non-musical text I use Minion Pro. I'm really satisfied with that, and I like to fine tune all the parameters As I learn new things about Engraving. But I would like to pair minion pro with tho other fonts, using this criteria:

1. Minion Pro: lyrics, staff labels, instructions, credits, page numbers etc..
2. A Sans Serif Font: I would use it for all the pages before the music ones (general infos, legend, performance notes, etc.)
3. Another Serif Font: I would use that for titling and dedication (front matter, first page. etc.). I was thinking about Requiem Font (https://www.typography.com/fonts/requiem/overview)

Do you think it's a good idea or are there more professional and correcxt ways to pair fonts? Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

Minion or Nepomuk are my main text fonts, but I do use National 2 (in standard, narrow, and condensed widths) as a sans-serif font for rehearsal marks, title pages, chord changes, and occasionally titles in the music itself. For title pages and front matter I like using fonts that are already in the score rather than something entirely new to give it a nice cohesion.

benwiggy wrote: 01 Jul 2026, 12:14
Bolder fonts need to be wider, in order to counteract the sausage effect, allowing more space for fatter strokes. You still need contrast between thin strokes and thicker ones. See how the serif on the p dynamic is still thin, compared to your letter p. Same for the counter, which has thick and thin parts, whereas yours is equally thick.

I also like italic fonts that are noticeably different from the dynamic font; the contrast between the dynamic (f) and descriptive text (poco più) helps both elements stand out more IMO.

benwiggy wrote: 01 Jul 2026, 12:14
Pairing fonts is like pairing wine with food. Firstly, Minion Pro covers something like 68 different styles: Condensed, SemiBold, and various optical sizes, so there a lot of decisions there about which Minion styles you're using, and for what.

I prefer Minion 3 to Minion Pro, if only for the reason that I really hate the "Th" ligature. However, for lyrics I do use the Minion Pro Caption Condensed regular and italic fonts (since annoyingly even though Minion 3 is newer than Minion Pro it doesn't have the condensed varieties), so I disable all ligatures for lyrics.

benwiggy wrote: 01 Jul 2026, 12:14 Pairing fonts is like pairing wine with food. Firstly, Minion Pro covers something like 68 different styles: Condensed, SemiBold, and various optical sizes, so there a lot of decisions there about which Minion styles you're using, and for what.

Yes, Minion does have a huge amount of style. I basically use it for most of the things in the score. E.g. I use Medium Cond Caption for the lyrics, Regular for Subtitle and Italic for dedication, Bold Display for title etc. I'm really satisfied with it even though I think I need to learn more. I'm kind of a newbie with typography and professional engraving.

benwiggy wrote: 01 Jul 2026, 12:14 The question, of course, is which Sans font works well with Minion; and how? Myriad Pro is Adobe's own "match" for Minion. News Gothic or Trade Gothic would also work well.

Thank you! Do you have any tips or resources where I can learn this skills?

benwiggy wrote: 01 Jul 2026, 12:14 If your performance notes are paragraphs of body text, then why not use Minion there, too? Save the Sans font for headings and titles. A Bold, slightly Condensed Geometric sans typeface would be a good counterpoint to the text. Perhaps with a bit of letterspacing.

The idea to use a completely different font for performance notes, legend etc. came from edition I've recently seen (I don't remember which one), where the publisher used to make blue coloured pages to distinguish the booklet. To color the page is not my cup of tea, but I'm searching for something that could distinguish the booklet from the score itself, so I came out with the idea of a completely different font.

I though also to use Minion Pro for the body text and a Sans Serif for the titling, but I'm afraid this is going to conflict with the composition title, which I want it to be serif. Is it a legit concern?

benwiggy wrote: 01 Jul 2026, 12:14 That's a very stylish font for titling, but it's another Humanist design. (Minion isn't quite a 'revival' of a Renaissance type, but it's clearly inspired by.)

Yes, that's what I feared, there's not much contrast. The primary idea was to use a typeface in the Didot or Bodoni style, but I don't feel like I want them in my scores. I was looking for something like Minion but "fancier". Any more ideas?

Thanks, @benwiggy, for the comment.  You are absolutely right about all of that.

That said, I still enjoy using my own fonts, and interestingly, they appear much more harmonious to me when printed on the page, than anything else.

AndreLorenzatti wrote: 30 Jun 2026, 14:27

1. Minion Pro: lyrics, staff labels, instructions, credits, page numbers etc..
2. A Sans Serif Font: I would use it for all the pages before the music ones (general infos, legend, performance notes, etc.)

I’m no expert, but this is basically what I do. Roman style font for all of the musical text, and a Sans Serif font for the title pages, and program notes, etc. I found one I liked.

3. Another Serif Font: I would use that for titling and dedication (front matter, first page. etc.). I was thinking about Requiem Font (https://www.typography.com/fonts/requiem/overview)

I just use the same roman style font. I know it’s boring, but it’s “classic” and it’s not going to become dated.

But I do know it’s a common practice and sometimes titles can be quite different fonts.

I feel one issue today is a lot of “kids on musescore” are using “flashy fonts” for their titles that really make it look like “hey, the kid who liked LOTR made a piece” kind of thing. So now not only do some font choices look dated, they also run the risk of conjuring up the whole “I scrolled through all my fonts and picked one” kind of thing

So I mean, I get giving some “character” to the title, but I guess there are also “tasteful choices” and figuring out what those are is the trick.