Interesting typefaces

These pages contain a short summary of a number of fonts that I find interesting in some way.

  • I like some of the typefaces and use them a lot.
  • Some fonts are so famous they simply deserve attention.
  • There are fonts that happen to be both frequently used and hated. How can you not go into them?

interesting or popular fonts

The goal is to show a few examples of each font, a bit of its history and what it should be used for. You may also be interested in the page with the best typefaces for print or the one discussing the most hated fonts. The pages on the history of prepress include a ‘font of the year’, starting from 1966.


akzidenz grotesk typeface

Read more about Akzidenz-Grotesk (Berthold, 1896, sans-serif)

apple color emoji typeface

Read more about Apple Color Emoji

arial unicode ms typeface

Read more about Arial Unicode MS (Microsoft, 1998, sans-serif)

avant garde typeface

Read more about Avant Garde (Lubalin & Carnase,  1968, sans-serif)

bembo typeface

Read more about Bembo (Griffo, 1496, serif)

bifur typeface

Read more about Bifur (Cassandre, 1929, sans-serif stencil)

bodoni typeface

Read more about Bodoni (Bodoni, around 1790, serif)

caslon typeface

Read more about Caslon (Caslon, around 1720, old-style serif)

comic sans typeface

Read more about Comic Sans (Connare, 1994, script)

courier typeface

Read more about Courier (Kettler, 1955, slab serif)

din typeface

Read more about DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung, 1931, sans-serif)

eurostile typeface

Read more about Eurostile (Novarese, 1962, sans-serif)

frutiger typeface

Read more about Frutiger (Frutiger, 1976, humanist sans-serif)

futura typeface

Read more about Futura (Renner, 1927, geometric sans-serif)

garamond typeface

Read more about Garamond (Garamond, 1500’s, serif)

gill sans typeface

Read more about Gill Sans (Gill, 1926, humanist sans-serif)

helvetica typeface

Read more about Helvetica (Miedinger, 1957, neo-grotesque sans-serif)

kuenstler script typeface

Read more about Kunstler Script (Bohn, 1902, formal script)

lithos typeface

Read more about Lithos (Twombly, 1989, display sans-serif)

lucida typeface

Read more about Lucida (Bigelow & Holmes, 1985, serif & sans-serif & script)

myriad typeface

Read more about Myriad (Slimback & Twombly, 1992, humanist sans-serif)

ocra and ocrb typeface

Read more about OCR-A & OCR-B (ANSI, 1968, sans-serif)

optima typeface

Read more about Optima (Zapf, 1955, humanist sans-serif)

palatino typeface

Read more about Palatino (Zapf, 1948, old-style serif)

papyrus typeface

Read more about Papyrus (Costello, 1983, fantasy)

rotis typeface

Read more about Rotis (Aicher, 1989, serif & sans-serif)

times new roman typeface

Read more about Times New Roman (Morison & Lardent, 1932, transitional serif)

univers typeface

Read more about Univers (Frutiger, 1957, neo-grotesque sans-serif)

verdana typeface

Read more about Verdana (Carter & Rickner, 1996, modern humanist sans-serif)

There are tons of other interesting fonts, like ErasNeue Haas Unica, Proxima NovaSyntax, Slate (shown below) and Zapf Dingbats, that might get added in the future.

Slate typeface example

11 thoughts on “Interesting typefaces

    1. Word. I don;t know who designed it and I’m sure he/she had the best intentions, but come on now… let’s make world a better place, not an embarrasing place that uses comic sans to corporate meetings!

  1. Hi There

    The term web-safe is used with good reason. Due to the relatively low resolving powers of screens, some letterforms may break up at their more delicate or fine points if they were not designed for screen. this isn’t unreasonable given that many typefaces were created centuries ago.

    Can I recommend Michael Bierut’s words about Helvetica seen here http://bit.ly/bzvLvB

    You may or may not agree,

    Andrew

  2. Hey there “subha”

    you need to invest in a book called “Graphic Master version 8”

    It has all of the proofreading marks in there amongst everything else in the world.

  3. sir,
    ur website is very useful for learners.i would like to know the difference fonts style.and ,i need
    the symbols of the proof reading.
    i am learner proof reader,so, i am very thankful
    to our website.

  4. I find it funny that your list doesn’t include “Trebuchet” seeing that all your subtitles are made with that font.

    I’m in the process of rebuilding my employers Visual Identity, ie Corporta brand. The typeface they had in the past is Trebuchet.

    Is this a good corporate font?

    Thanks

    1. Trebuchet is one of the so-called web safe fonts, fonts that can be found on virtually all systems used to access the web. That expalins why you’ll find it used on many sites. It does however not necessarily make it an interesting font.
      Your question about whether it is a good corporate font is an interesting one. There is no easy answer to that as there are many things that need to be considered when choosing a corporate font. Some thoughts:
      – I wouldn’t know if the style of Trebuchet fits with the image and look that your company wants to give.
      – One disadvantage of any commonly used font is that it is not very exclusive. It might lead to artwork that looks a bit bland. This is one of the reasons why many companies use tailor made fonts that are slight variations of well-known typefaces.
      – The fact that Trebuchet is available on both Mac and PC is a definite advantage for a corporate font. Even if everyone within the corporation uses PCs, it is likely that outsourced design work is done of Macs. This makes it useful to use a cross-platform compatible font as a corporate font.
      – Licensing is a major concern for any font that is supposed to be used company-wide. It is not just the cost of the license that is important but also the overhead of getting it installed on user’s systems. By choosing a font that by default ships with the operation system, you avoid this issue.
      – Personally I prefer corporate fonts for which a wide range of faces are available. That used to be the case when my employer used Univers as the corporate font. Later on they switched to a font for which there was no italic and heavy version. That proved to be pretty restrictive in some design work.

  5. I can not make heads or tails of this site. It says on the web search that you have eps files or vector files for fonts….. WHERE ARE THEY? I have looked in every corner of your site adn can not even find any fonts at all. Just leads you to another thing talking about font history.. I need the font it self. I need to download a font. If you dont have fonts PLEASE remove it from the web search.

    1. I think you are misinterpreting search results. The fact that there is information on the eps and font file formats on this site does not imply there are any freebie files to be found. Refine your search to include words like ‘free’ and ‘download’ and you’ll see that this site does not get listed any longer.

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