Typekit Practice
Featured lesson
Lessons walk through specific topics or methods in the practice of typography, with a clear objective or takeaway skill that can be immediately applied to design work.
Caring about OpenType features 
In this lesson, we’ll learn what OpenType features are, when to use them, and why they matter.
Featured topic: history & stories
References to articles, books, websites, talks, and more, organized by topic and sometimes used in lessons.
Pairing typefaces with history in mind
Aura Seltzer, writing for Typekit:
Focus on the backstory of each typeface — the context for its creation. You can combine typefaces that were informed by the same tool, output medium, historic era, or concept. For example, you can pair typefaces that were both inspired by calligraphic brushwork, were both designed for low-resolution printers, were both designed in the early 1900s, or were both conceived to address legibility.
Paying attention to history is one of several approaches Aura takes in this study about combining typefaces.
“The real problem was that they used type at all”
Mark Simonson, writing in his notebook:
Movie posters, signs, magazine covers, movie titles and credits — back in the 1920s and 1930s, that kind of thing was almost always lettered by hand. Type – and it would have been metal type, back then – was not up to the job. There were too few styles, too few sizes. It just wasn’t as flexible as someone skilled with a brush. Things that are so easy for us to do with type today were practically impossible back then, which provided plenty of work for letterers.
If you’re careful, it is possible to get close to the look of lettering with modern fonts. Some are even made to look that way.
You’ll find a few such fonts classified as Script or Handmade on Typekit.