I Dream of Fonts

November 1, 2012 3:08 PM

Building a font library, what are your favourite fonts and why? I'm asking from a design perspective, so mostly looking for people who have programs designed for cataloguing their massive and picked through collections.

What is your go to sans/serifs fonts? Fonts for titles? Walls of text? Logos?

If you had to pick 5 fonts to do all your work with, what fonts would they be? (and any formatting touches you poke them with)

posted by Dynex to media & arts (5 answers total)

Clarendon
- Great for titles. Readable slab serif, with nice curvy letterforms

Avenir
- A beautiful face for titles or body copy. Classy, airy, and precise

League Gothic (a free clone, sort of, of Alternate Gothic #1)
- Almost retro, clean and symmetrical

Futura
- It's Futura

Sentinal
- Similar to Clarendon. Another slab serif that's good for titles and more
posted by littlerobothead at 3:24 PM on November 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Funny, I just answered this very question on Quora:

- Amplitude, the epitome of a functional contemporary sans: big x-height, large apertures, fresh, unique (but not disturbingly so), with a huge family of weights and widths for any design challenge.
- Neue Haas Grotesk, the true Helvetica.
- FF Clifford, the best text face I know. Once you see a book set in this, you don't want to use anything else.
- Metric/Calibre, a geometric alternative to Futura that is much more flexible, stylistically and functionally.
- Eames Century Modern, a slab serif that can be either loud and powerful, or playful and pleasing.
posted by Typographica at 3:47 PM on November 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

If you had to pick 5 fonts to do all your work with, what fonts would they be? (and any formatting touches you poke them with)

I'm a graphic designer and would never do this. Only 5 fonts?! I'd gouge my monitor out with an x-acto knife.

That said, I have a "workhorse" set, i.e. fonts that could be used in a lot of situations. They are Franklin Gothic, Futura, Myriad Pro, Garamond, Minion Pro, Bembo, Caslon, Bodini, Memphis and Janson. LOVE Janson. I'm specifically talking about a full set of these fonts, i.e. Light, Regular, Semi-Bold, Bold and Extra Bold (or Heavy or Black), preferably with Condensed and Extended versions.

Naturally, there's a ton of other useful fonts and would never stick to just the above. You shouldn't have a "go to" font, except for personal projects.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:00 PM on November 1, 2012

On preview, yes to what Brandon Blatcher said about: it being hard to choose only 5; and getting full sets (all weights, and preferably true small caps and old-style numerals options); and that the content should drive your typeface choice. That said, my faves:

· the entire Thesis family (TheSans, TheMix, TheSerif)
· the entire Gotham family
· the entire Freight family (Sans, Text, Micro)
    I sometimes have to tweak the word spacing on Freight.
· Eidetic (Neo, Modern)
· Jenson

I have expensive tastes, apparently.
posted by mon-ma-tron at 4:07 PM on November 1, 2012

5 families; I would say

Titling Gothic
Gotham Rounded & Gotham
Caslon
FF Meta & Serif
Helvetica

W.
posted by wolfr at 12:58 PM on November 2, 2012