When a client brief arrives with three typefaces already chosen, we lay them side by side at real size on the proofing wall. Usually two of them are doing the same job. The third is a display face that looked exciting in a specimen and tired by the second brochure.

The rule we write into every guideline

One family, three weights, two widths. Everything else is spacing. In practice that means:

• Display: the heaviest weight, stretched, set tight and in capitals for anything above 40 px
• Text: regular weight at normal width, 16 to 18 px, never lighter on screens
• Labels: a monospaced cut or the narrowest width, small capitals, generous tracking

Three roles are enough to build a packaging range, a website and a forty-page annual report. We know because we have built all three on the same family for the same client in the same year.

What it saves

The obvious saving is licences. Fewer families means fewer seats to buy every time the client hires a designer or opens a new office. The less obvious saving is speed. A site that loads one variable file instead of six static weights renders text sooner on a slow phone in a train tunnel.

The biggest saving is attention. A small team can learn one family deeply. They know where it kerns badly, which numerals are too wide for a price tag, how the italic behaves at 9 pt on uncoated stock. That knowledge compounds. Three families split it three ways.

When we break it

We do sometimes add a second face. A wine label once needed a hand-cut script for the estate name because the grower's grandmother had drawn it on the original barrels. That was not decoration; it was evidence. If a second typeface carries a story the first one cannot, it earns its place. If it only carries a mood, we leave it in the specimen book.