You haven't told us just how the text strings set in serif and sans-serif will be juxtaposed. If the serif and sans-serif text strings can occur side by side in running text, I'd apply the following criteria to guide my search for a suitable sans-serif: (a) match the x-height of the Roman font (very easy to achieve via fontspec
's option Scale=MatchLowercase
), (b) the sans-serif font shouldn't be all that compressed, (c) it should feature a dual-level g
(as opposed to a single-level g
employed by Helvetica and Myriad), (d) it should have fairly slender strokes (unlike, say, Gill sans), and (e) still look sufficiently different from Garamond.
For my own writing work that involves Garamond Roman fonts (any "Garalde", really) as the main text font, I've found that Palatino Sans
-- yes, there really is such a thing! -- works very well as a companion font.
The following screenshot shows several groups of font choices. In each selection, the first main text line is in EB Garamond, the second in the sans-serif of choice, and the third alternates words using serif and sans-serif. IMNSHO, Palatino Sans
harmonizes quite nicely with EB Garamond, while still having a true "sans-serif" character as opposed to, say, Optima
. Of course, Optima
(also by Hermann Zapf, the creator of Palatino and Palatino Sans) has frequently been called a "serifless Roman font", as opposed to a "true" sans-serif font.
Naturally, this form of juxtaposition of serif and sans-serif fonts assumes that it's meaningful to make such a juxtaposition. If your documents don't contain serif and sans-serif elements in close proximity, the evaluation given in this answer may not be particularly relevant for you.
% !TEX TS-program = lualatex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{EB Garamond} % EB Garamond is the "roman" font
\defaultfontfeatures{Scale=MatchLowercase}
%% Macro to load sans-serif font and print several test strings
\newcommand\fourlines[1]{%
\setsansfont{#1}
\texttt{#1}
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
\textsf{The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.}
The \textsf{quick} brown \textsf{fox} jumps \textsf{over} the \textsf{lazy} dog.}
\begin{document}
\fourlines{Palatino Sans Com}
\medskip
\fourlines{Optima nova LT Pro}
\medskip
\fourlines{Linux Biolinum O}
\medskip
\fourlines{Gill Sans MT}
\medskip
\fourlines{Helvetica Neue}
\medskip
\fourlines{Myriad Pro}
\medskip
\fourlines{Calibri}
\end{document}
;-)
Seriously, EB Garamond is a baroque era font, and I'd never use a sans serif font along with it. Welcome to TeX.SX! I'm certain you'll get answers, but not from me on this topic.;-)
classic thesis