Well, I'm a bit of a font dork and I know there are more out there like me. I just wonder if there are any on this board obsessed enough to have a personal favorite. I find myself using Myriad (adobe default font) more and more over that past couple of years. I realize that probably makes me a bit of a hipster doofus, but you know, it just has so much more personality than a helvetica, ariel for PC users, which though it is a knock off, I submit that ariel is in fact superior to helvetica due to helvetica's silly looking curved leg on the capital "R". I mean seriously, curved?! I know this thing was made up over 50 years ago, but that had to look bad even then. Am I right here?
Favorite fonts?
Comments ... #
You have seen the documentary "Helvetica"? Good movie, even for those who don't know their serifs from their san serifs.
I certainly enjoyed it. My wife would disagree with you however.
posted by thetoledowire_com on Feb 03, 2009 at 11:21:56 am #
If you are a fan of san-serifs I would point you in the direction of Univers, Futura, Akzidenz-Grotesk... anything other than Arial. I think you are the first person I've ever heard proclaim Arial tops Helvetica.
And, Myriad and I have bad history... so I would have to disagree with you there as well.
But back to the original question, I don't have a favorite typeface. I do have a few fave foundries:
Village http://vllg.com/
Hoefler & Frere Jones http://typography.com
P22 http://www.p22.com/
Emigre http://www.emigre.com/
And Typographica is one of my type-related blogs: http://typographica.org/
FontFeed is great too: http://fontfeed.com/
And Typographica is one of my FAVE type-related blogs:
Bauhaus Bold
http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.asp?pid=201589
Can't use it everywhere, but it is an attention getter in a dignified manner.
Times New Roman or Courier
posted by INeedCoffee on Feb 03, 2009 at 03:09:57 pm #
I'm a font addict and I "own" over 10,000 fonts...LOL! I don't know that I have a "favorite", for fancy ones I like many of the 2Peas Fonts, but for most "common" stuff, I usually choose Comic Sans, I like the simple boldness of it!
posted by justsimplyholly on Feb 03, 2009 at 03:54:55 pm #
Times New Roman or Courier? Really? Not much of a risk taker are you INeed Coffee!
holland: I can appreciate the artistic appeal of other fonts, but for what I do for a living getting a message across is more important than how something looks.
I like those fonts as they are easy on the eyes to read and somewhat a standard. :) Guess I have a different favorite font depending on the situation in which it's used.
Century Schoolbook L is nice, as well as URW Chancery L.
These are also for the english language. I have some favorites when it comes to Japanese writing.
posted by INeedCoffee on Feb 03, 2009 at 06:52:39 pm #
When I see Courier or Times New Roman, my mind automatically registers " technologically behind the times" and I give the document short shrift. I don't like professional correspondence too "cutsey" either, that puts the document in the frivolous pile. So, for professional correspondence I really like Ariel. For professional advertising I use something from the Bauhaus set.
garamond
posted by enjoyeverysandwich on Feb 04, 2009 at 09:27:25 am #
Ariel in Blue, helvetica in Red. I'm sorry, but Ariel takes this one.
posted by thetoledowire_com on Feb 04, 2009 at 09:31:31 am #
Holland, it's not that TNR and Courier are behind the times, it is within the tradition of acceptable scholastic writing styles like APA, Chicago etc.
I was not going to touch this topic at first but you can't even spell its name right. Its Arial not Ariel...and I'm sorry better than Helvetica? I think if you knew even a little history about Helvetica you would not be saying Arial is better.
In my academic and journalistic work, I use Times New Roman out of convention. I put up with TNR, but I utterly detest Courier and Courier New, the other common "serious" fonts.
On my blog I use a lot of the sans-serif Verdana, which is a little easier on the eyes than those stark serif fonts.
For visual presentations like PowerPoint, I also stick with sans-serif, and I have been using a lot of Arial. I am also playing with Trebuchet MS for visuals (yeah, evil corporate font, but I'm a PC-slave).
posted by historymike on Feb 04, 2009 at 12:16:41 pm #
Most of the time I use Georgia. Try it, you'll like it. When typing numerals though, some of them are drop down style, not linear.
I need a coffee, too.
Arial - so sorry. I still prefer to use it. It looks good even when I'm misspelling something, which unfortunately is more often than I like.
courier has one use - guitar tab - what is the feature called? monospacing? every letter takes the same amount of space - completely necessary for tab.
posted by enjoyeverysandwich on Feb 04, 2009 at 05:49:04 pm #
"I think if you knew even a little history about Helvetica you would not be saying Arial is better."
I know the history. It's still better.
True on the courier guitar tab. No other acceptable use though.
posted by thetoledowire_com on Feb 05, 2009 at 12:03:27 am #
"Most of the time I use Georgia. Try it, you'll like it. When typing numerals though, some of them are drop down style, not linear."
Ah, yes! Georgia! I was recently doing a project and discovered that Georgia was just the perfect touch. Looks especially good when you are working with letters larger than 12-pt and/or bolded.
Most of the printed stuff I do, though, is just internal-type memo stuff -- borrrring -- and I stick with the default Times New Roman. Fine with me.
Ha ha. I saw that documentary, "Helvetica," and thought it was interesting, too. It sounds boring, but it was very well done.
Login or create an account to post a comment.