Font Flame aims to be the Tinder for typefaces

This week, the Web’s been falling in love with Font Flame. Billed as the ‘Tinder’ for typefaces, it’s an addictive little site that asks you to judge font pairings.

You can love or hate the combinations that are randomly presented, all drawn from Google’s free font library. If you love a combination, it will be saved for you under My Type.

Suitably as superficial as picking a life partner from a selfie, it’s questionable how useful the pairings actually are. When browsing through combinations the typical response seems to be: hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… love… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate… hate…

Developed by Jan Wennesland, Font Flame is still in development, and with feedback from the design community Wennesland hopes to make it the definitive tool for font pairing.

One of the first revisions was the introduction of curated suggestions by Typewolf’s Jeremiah Shoaf. Whilst the suggestions are nice it does circumvent the purpose of the app. It would be great to see a ‘Most Loved’ section, that combines curation and random selection.

Currently the biggest obstacle to the app being useful is that you’re asked to compare a title, and a subtitle; it would be far more useful to compare a display font with a text font, preferably with language options. It would also be nice to be able to ‘pin’ one of the random options and keep rolling the dice until you find a suitable partner for it. Hopefully those are things that will be addressed in a future version.

As with relationships, compatibility is a complex formula, dependent on contrasting and complementary characteristics. Font Flame tends to produce just a few usable combinations. But it’s a great way to show non-typophiles how much work goes into type pairing. And if nothing else, it’s a fun way to spend 30 minutes.

Ben Moss

Ben Moss has designed and coded work for award-winning startups, and global names including IBM, UBS, and the FBI. When he’s not in front of a screen he’s probably out trail-running.