Most important fonts
FontShop Germany created a special web site, www.100besteschriften.de, which lists the 100 best typefaces of all time. An international jury assembled the overview based on sales numbers, historical relevance and aesthetic qualities. The nice looking site and matching PDF-file provide many interesting details about the choices that were made.
I have taken the liberty of listing their 33 first entries below. Even if you cannot read German, it is worth to look at the full overview.
Quite surprisingly some classics such as Avenir, Palatino, Caslon or Benguiat don’t show up at the top of the list, even though they make it to the Top 100. The last font to make it to the list at place 100 is Mistral. Obviously others may have another opinion about these fonts, so it also pays to look at the list of most hated fonts.
A bit serif-shy there.
Whatever happened to Clarendon?
As an EFL teacher producing materials for foreign students, clarity is important. I settled on Clarendon by way of Century, Century Oldstyle and Times.
Not to be a crazy person but I love LOVE Courier. It is a classy readable, elegant monospaced font that dominated Industry, government, and science for 30 or 40 years. It conjures up the overbuilt, straightforward American design that built the flying fortress and invented the computer. For decades U.S. diplomatic transcripts were addressed in the font that stated clearly: We are a simple people, but we are not stupid.
Blown up in vector format one finds its utility is founded on elegance and grace in design. It is a great, and rare success in the application of modernist principles. And to top it off, it has aged exceptionally well. Even today, the programmers of the world find themselves falling back on typewriter Courier, which has born pixelation with the grace of a sharp and beautiful elder woman at the head of a multi-billion dollar military contractor.
Hi, you have picked the elite of fonts. I also like Zapf typeface. But, these fonts I use every day.
All best
Marcin