Zilla Slab + Lato

technicalfriendlymodern

Grumpy wizards make toxic brew

A standfirst set in Lato, one size up — where a pairing starts earning trust.

The five boxing wizards jump quickly over the lazy dog, mixing jugs of quiet vodka while the jury watches. Click anywhere in this preview and type your own text to try the pairing.

“Type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters.”

— Matthew Carter

Fig. 1 — Zilla Slab over Lato, in the wild.

Zilla Slab 600 / Lato 400 — click any section and type your own copy.

Why it works

Zilla Slab's blunt rectangular serifs give headings a constructed, product-engineering feel — it was drawn for Mozilla's rebrand, and that open-web pragmatism carries over. Lato's semi-rounded humanist letterforms soften the page at text sizes, so the combination reads as technical but not cold. The slab's strong horizontal emphasis also anchors card and feature layouts where a plain sans heading would float.

More about each face: Zilla Slab · Lato

Use this pairing

HTML — Google Fonts embed
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Zilla+Slab:wght@600&family=Lato:wght@400;700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">
CSS
h1, h2, h3 {
  font-family: 'Zilla Slab', 'Courier New', Georgia, serif;
  font-weight: 600;
}

body {
  font-family: 'Lato', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
  font-weight: 400;
}
Next.js — next/font
import { Zilla_Slab, Lato } from "next/font/google";

const heading = Zilla_Slab({
  subsets: ["latin"],
  weight: "600",
  variable: "--font-heading",
});

const body = Lato({
  subsets: ["latin"],
  weight: "400",
  variable: "--font-body",
});
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