List your favorite fonts and why!

This is sort a “desert island” list: if pressed for time and/or space in your hypothetical font bag you are stranded with, what typefaces would you pack? I’ll go first with some preferences for body text, not headline fonts.
I’d love to hear comments, moreover I’d like to hear of your own Essential Typeface List, with reasons why!

•Times New Roman is so common and so overused, I don’t think I’ve used it in almost ten years. When I want a clean serif typeface that is open and easy to read from 10-14 points when printed, I use

•Palatino—It’s very open, the counters aren’t blocked in, and the snub-serif provides a modern look. It’s overused, but fonts go in and out of fashion, and I believe Palatino is a classic.

•Garamond—there are two schools of preference with Garamond; those who believe ITC ruined the digital version because Tony Stan increased the x-height from the original designed by Claude Garamond. If you can find Garamond 3, it’s lighter in weight and more faithful to the original. Either way, Garamond is eco-friendly when used in books—it uses less ink than sentences cast in Times.

• Galliard-I really like this font created by Matthew Carter (of Carter and Cone, who also created Georgia). It has extended, almost exaggerated serifs, and the italic version is a piece of artwork. It’s almost equivalent in weight to Times, so it’s not an ink saver, and produces a medium “page color” when viewing a page cast in 11-12pt. at a distance.

• Trump Medieval—It’s more dense than Palatino, it has snub serifs, but the serifs are more pronounced and extended than Palatino. It’s great for older eyes (!) and can be used for formal occasions, text in books, wedding announcements, and so on.

•Adobe Minion—This guy has a lot of family members, and it’s a little similar to the original Garamond 3, but it’s heavier.

•Albertus—It’s stiff, and classic, and somber. This isn’t a typeface you use all the time, but Albertus has a real specific “attitude”, and you just need to find the right occasion to use it.

I'll try to come back soon and provide a list of tasty headline fonts.

My Best,

Gary

I use a lot of typefaces and I find it really hard to pick a favourite. My husband and I do a lot of ad layouts and I will often try to match a font to the client or to the product being advertised. I have to say I like Garamond and I have a whole family of Switzerland which is quite similar to Helvetica.

I also quite like script fonts, my favourite free script font is Scriptina Pro which I found on Font Squirrel.com

Scriptana is quite nice, I'd agree.

I'm not sure, but I think "Switzerland" is identical to Helvetica.

See, you can copyright a font name, but not the design itself (or at least, it's hard to prove).

The FontShop vends some nice typefaces, but some of them are reworks of existing typefaces whose names are trademarked and such. "Addled", for example, is "Ad Lib", whose name is copyright Bitstream and a few others.

I actually telephoned SWFTE when they were in business and asked them for the "real names" of fonts they distributed.

I tell you what, "name that font" might make an interesting thread here, or just coming up with the commonly-known names for "mystery fonts" (ie. "Bengal" is actually "Benguiat", and "Surf Style" is actually "Van Dijk".

-g-

We have a new sub-fourm: Name That Font that would be perfect to make note of fonts that go by different names. I've copied Gary's post #3 to that forum.
What other fonts do you know about that go by different names? Post the font names and examples of the fonts, BUT NOT THE FONTS THEMSELVES them in the Name That Font sub-forum.

Hmm. The new fonts section has gotten me thinking about typefaces all day, with this topic rattling around the skull the most.

It would be difficult for me to pick a few, especially different ones than Gary's and Frances' pick of Scriptina—I would like to make some invites with it one day.

Among my favorites is the Goudy Old Style family as for serif'd type. For non-serif type heads, I have paired it with Goudy Sans and like the sans version's playfulness.

If I could call all 61 weights and styles of Helvetica and Helv. Neue that I have a single font, well, I would include it in "the bag." I don't get tired of using the variations.

I have used the Warnock Pro family off and on over the last decade for various things. I like the unfinished trailing descenders on both the cap and lowercase "J" and what looks like a hesitation of the descender of the lowercase "y" when using a nib and ink.

Hmm. Lots more I am sure.

Mike

Fredric Goudy was also known for creating Copperplate, and a font he specified could only be used by the University of California in 1934, called California, which was later recast as ITC Berkley, also a nice serif Roman font.

A couple of things that Make Goudy Text Oldstyle distinctive is:

• the lower-than-expected x-height for the lowercase fonts. Look at the blue dotted line and see where the lowercase letters come up to in Times Roman.

• The angle at which the thin parts occur in the Roman ("thick and thin" strokes) characters. It's called a diagonal stress, as opposed to Didot and other modern fonts that use a vertical stress (Bodoni is a good example). Oldstyles can also be distinguished by the staggering of the number characters. They have alternating baselines which often make a long typed number quick to read.

Goudy Sans actually does have a very slight serif. Here's example's of Helvetica compared to Futura and Goudy Sans. Fonts go in and out of style and I think Futura is coming back; I'll tend to use Futura for serious assignments and a little "lighter" face is Gill Sans.

Attachment 88114

Yep, Futura is a keeper. Its slight variations of shape (compare the uppercase Bs in your example) appeal to me.

Mike

Myriad for print and trebuchet for web

...and 'why'?

:)

I also really like and use the Myriad family wherever possible in print.

Alternatives I could live with include Dax and Frutiger, same sort of stark but human feel.

Attachment 88123

My favorite italicized text is ... Engravers' Old Style 205. Why? I love the details, especially of the lower case letter forms. It appears to me to be both a formal style appropriate for books to announcements, yet not as much as perhaps a formal script font.

Attachment 88124

Take care, Mike

What foundry, Mike? I'd love to add Engraver's to my collection.

It might be the only font I don't own :)

My current fave italic is Galliard, after Matthew Carter.

Attachment 88125

—g

http://www.paratype.com/btstore/font...dStyle-205.htm

Note who updated the style lastly ;))

Take care, Mike

Here's a sample sheet...Mike

Oh, erm, that would be Mr. Carter, eh? :)

Bitstream has fronted for so many companies, including Adobe systems, that I can hardly keep the "real" names of typefaces straight. For example, their Exotic 350 is Pegnoit, and they offer three weights.

I thought CorelDRAW had basically bought Bitstream...good to see they're still kicking in the age of fontface...

-g-

If you only want the Italic font you can find it at:
http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/single...le_205_italic/
The single font is only $24.75 USD.

How about handwriting fonts? does anyone have a favourite handwriting font? One of my favourites is Ladylike by Blambot. I like it because it gives a feminine touch and yet is very readable Another new favourite is one of the fonts from the Xara offer Aglio handwriting.

Attachment 88128

Freehand Tool can be used to make some custom glyphs when needed.

;)) yes it can. But as we are talking about fonts here....

Ah...but did you notice the Cherokee font in the lower right?

One of my favorite fonts because it contains the Cherokee Syllabary. Three glyphs pronounced the same as the seven shapes representing English characters. :D

The Syllabary and pronunciation guide: http://www.cherokee.org/Extras/Downloads/syllabary.html
The existing syllabary is the result of using many lead type from several languages rather than creating new lead type to conform with Sequoyah's original symbols. Elias Boudinot made the changes when getting the language ready for the printing press and the Cherokee Phoenix news paper.

I wondered what that was. I thought it was some sort of initials.

Hi Frances.

I leave a couple always installed and few sitting in a folder just in case. I like Nevison Casual the most and have found use for Holiday Springs a few times.

Nevison I like simply because it is similar to notes I read in the margins of a book we got from my wife's grandfather (not his writing however). There is similarities in mainly the lower case 'o' and the loop in the 'k'.

Attachment 88132

Holiday Springs I like simply because of its playful look.

Attachment 88133


Take care, Mike

Ok. How about script fonts?

My favorite is Snell Roundhand. I think it is an elegant script. Now, Gary will likely know the designer and I fear I am painting a theme here...

Attachment 88134

Take care, Mike

One of my favourite script fonts is BlackJack I have found a few different uses for it. I'll bet Gary probably knows another name for this one too ;))

Attachment 88135

No, that's actually BlackJack, the proper name, and I bought it on sale along with one of Nick Curtis' fonts about two years ago.

My Best,

Gary

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mwenz

Ok. How about script fonts?

My favorite is Snell Roundhand. I think it is an elegant script. Now, Gary will likely know the designer ...

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Yep, I'd know Matthew Carter's work a mile and 20 picas away, Mike.

:)

Hint: if you're remotely curious about a font's creator, do a search with something like "Who designed Snell Roundhand". It was the third Google hit, and from there, you can learn about the creator on wikipedia.

And then done $5 a year to wikipedia because these people continue to tank as a volunteer organization, and they're easily as useful as PBS.

—g

For a Christmas I have always liked Christmas Card font. To me it just has a Christmas look. I couldn't find out much about it other than it is offered by Harold's Fonts, and available from dafont.com, Font Squirrel also has at least one of his fonts. It is a display kind of a font and has a calligraphic old world look about it. http://www.dafont.com/christmas-card.font

Larry that is also one of my favorite fonts. It is based on the hand lettered opening titles for the movie "It's a Wonderful Life".
http://www.ufonts.com/fonts/christmas-card.html

Thanks for that info Bill. I just looked that up and that font looks the same or at least very close to the hand lettering in that opening.

No one has yet mentioned any Blackletter fonts. Two notable Blackletter fonts and Schwabacher and Fraktur. By the way, there are two Cyrillic fonts Moyenage and Blonde Fraktur, that include Cyrillic as well as Roman characters.

Hi and welcome to TalkGraphics, Myrtonos—

No one has mentioned Blackletter fonts perhaps because no one has a favorite, and this is the thread for posting favorite fonts and adding an explanation. Would you like to educate us here and tell us why you like these two typefaces?

Blackletter is exceptionally formal—weddings, official documents—and metal bands (!).

Um, Myrtonos, you've just joined as a member of TalkGraphics, and I suspect you didn't completely read the member policies about posting links with your first post.

It's bad form; it usually looks as though someone joined just to advertise and divert traffic from tg, so if you want to show a font sample, as a new member post a bitmap image, okay? This will keep other Moderators from criticizing you.

That said, Moyenage is a nice example of how someone is reworking the Blackletter letterform into something much more legible than, say, 300 years ago.

My Best,

Gary

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gare

No one has mentioned Blackletter fonts perhaps because no one has a favorite, and this is the thread for posting favorite fonts and adding an explanation. Would you like to educate us here and tell us why you like these two typefaces?

Blackletter is exceptionally formal—weddings, official documents—and metal bands (!).

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In the English speaking world, Blackletter is considered especially formal, no not much in German speaking countries, for they used it extensively before the Hitler era.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gare

Um, Myrtonos, you've just joined as a member of TalkGraphics, and I suspect you didn't completely read the member policies about posting links with your first post.

It's bad form; it usually looks as though someone joined just to advertise and divert traffic from tg, so if you want to show a font sample, as a new member post a bitmap image, okay? This will keep other Moderators from criticizing you.

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I don't know how to post bitmap, and that policy has not applied on any other forums on which I have posted.

That said, Moyenage is a nice example of how someone is reworking the Blackletter letterform into something much more legible than, say, 300 years ago.[/QUOTE]

I find all Blackletter fonts quite easy to read.

A sample of text taken from my previous post due to a glitch:
Jonothan Barnbrook has no plans to add Cyrillic characters to his "Bastard" blackletter, as adding new characters would be a considerable piece of work and his font is not a big seller. But I wonder whether it would get more attention of he added Cyrillic characters.

um why hello there, i think i am falling for you : http://www.typographyserved.com/gall...isplay/3303986

Welcome to the Fonts & Typography forum stayfocused, we hope you'll stick around and talk fonts with us and maybe even help us build one or two.

I do have to mention that we normally don't allow new members to post links, but I'll make an exception this time, your post was on topic, isn't spammy and it is a lovely font you like.

My all-time favourite font is Myriad Pro. It is extremely versatile, useful for body text. Also it excels as a display font. Its super-sexy curves just knock me out (probably useless in bed, though). Attached is the Bold version, placed along a curve (kerning between certain characters because the shape of the line created some gaps between some and squeezed others together) with a couple of contours and a three colour fill. Very tasty!
Bob.