*Please pardon the un-styled mess why I am rethinking and re-designing my blog!*
We all have our favorites – from Pantone colors to stylistic approaches to fonts. Designers are at their best when they like the elements they are designing with. Find out what fonts these 8 designers love and why – AND see them in use!
In terms of a favorite typeface, I don’t have one, and believe it’s important to use what best suits the design brief. That said, I do enjoy H&FJ’s Gotham, and an example of where I use it can be found in the header of my Logo Design Love blog:
I have many favorite fonts. I use certain fonts depending on what kind of feel and look the design/client calls for. In general, I tend to use san serif fonts more often. For me, san serifs are cleaner, more modern, and easier to read on the page and on the eyes.
I usually choose a font for the headline and one for body text. The headline can be more fun and usual. To capture people’s attention, draw them in. Currently, one of my favorite headline/sub headline fonts is Rosewood, which I used on a five-page article design for Create Magazine. I also used the font Imago, a san serif to balance and compliment Rosewood, a wilder font.
I love Hoefler because it’s understated and elegant. I like the way my poetry looks in it.
My favorite typefaces are like my favorite songs or movies… there are the classics, the ones I will always have a special place for in my heart, the ones that I can find a use for over and over and always see something new and special about them. Then there are the ones that hit a time in my life and we have a heated whirlwind romance, a project comes and goes for that type.
Last year in a CD design project, I used Mrs. Eaves, my favorite small cap serif and Snell Roundhouse, which was my favorite script at the time… not sure which script I’m in love with today, maybe Aquiline? *swoon*
One of my favorite fonts is Arial. To most, it may seem like a boring choice, but the majority of my designs are for web. So for me, Arial is an essential web based font. Not all fonts look fantastic when adjusting the leading, height, thickness, etc. One of the reasons I like Arial so much is because it’s so versatile and easy to work with. It looks great in bold, italics, and in other forms too. The greatest thing about Arial is that it can be used from corporate materials to edgy designs and still works!
It’s like a less cold version of Futura. Still very geometric sans-serif, but just feels warmer to me. It’s a nice full family from a 35 light to a 95 black. Obliques (but no italics). I like how it looks on this site I did last year in the header. Shows two weights working together, both welcoming and professional.
Georgia is an elegant serif typeface – I come from a print background so I used to use it quite frequently. I just started working with Georgia on the web and it’s still beautiful. It’s a very popular font, almost overused, but if used in the right context it will always stand out from the rest. Georgia is also very legible and provides a great reader experience.
Years ago I worked on a publication that had a limited font collection, and an even more limited budget for purchasing additional fonts. In researching fonts that would give me a great deal of “bang” for the initial investment, I came across Palatino. It had nicely shaped letter forms, quite a variety in style between regular and italic forms, and great readability as a display, headline and text type. Over the past 25 years it has been a type option I have used for a wide variety of purposes. For a recent Identity project, I was looking for a well-balanced and unique uppercase “P” letterform to initiate the identity for the communications company PavelComm. I immediately thought of Palatino with its graceful, yet professional, uppercase “P.” However, I didn’t necessary like the Palatino treatment of the italic letters used to make up the name. Still, italics were desired to show some movement in the PavelComm corporate identity. I made use of the regular Palatino letterforms I liked so much and then digitally skewed them to give the appearance of the type being italic. In the process a unique identity was created for the company, making use of the font on which I often “fall back” in the design of corporate marketing and promotion materials.
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[29] Comments
Posted in design, Graphic Design, illustration, type, Web 2.OH
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Jeff Fisher LogoMotives says:
Thanks so much for asking me to participate in your blog entry on favorite fonts.
October 6th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Chris Coyier says:
Very Cool! I’m with Adelle on the Georgia thing too on the web, I’m really starting to like that font in a number of different situations.
Looks like I wasn’t very clear on what the name of my font was eh? Avenir.
October 6th, 2008 at 6:41 am
mayhemstudios says:
Thank you Niki for the opportunity to contribute. I’m in good company.
- Cal
October 6th, 2008 at 7:12 am
Liz says:
this was a nice blog idea! thanks for involving me.
October 6th, 2008 at 9:03 am
adelle says:
Thanks Niki for putting this together, it was a great idea to get other’s faves and thanks for letting me contribute!
October 6th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Josh M says:
Nice post! I do love some Mrs. Eaves and a good use of Futura.
I must confess that I have a love affair with Gotham right now.
October 6th, 2008 at 9:23 am
SteamPoweredDesign says:
Nice post, Niki. I like that someone included Georgia, which is one of my favourites for web, except that PC Georgia looks terrible…
Right now, I’ve been playing with Segoe. I didn’t realize until just now that it was MS’s branding typeface, but I like it because it was free and came with a lot of weights (terms which are usually mutually exclusive), both very good criteria for a typeface when you’re a poor recent college grad.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Josh of Cubicle Ninjas says:
Very cool idea. I’m glad to see I’m not alone in a few of my favorites.
October 6th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Sander says:
Great list! Thanks for compiling the favourites of design bloggers.
@Renee Rist: Take a look at this list, there are more alternatives for Arial then you would think.
I agree with Adelle for web is Georgia one of the most beautiful typefaces.
For design my personal favs are: ff meta (& serif), ff info, transit, akidenz grotesk, frutiger, bigvesta… and more.
Where’s John (iLT) fav font?
October 6th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Andrew Beeston says:
I totally love Georgia – I don’t know why, but it just works for me. I don’t get a chance to use it too often though.
One thing that might help the article, if you could bold the names of the fonts? When I scanned through it first I was looking for some easily recognisable font names but couldn’t see them
October 6th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
David Airey says:
Again, thanks very much for asking me to join in. I enjoyed reading the favourites of the other contributors.
October 7th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Renee says:
@Sander – I know all about web based fonts silly. I didn’t choose Arial because it was my only alternative.
October 7th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
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October 8th, 2008 at 5:44 am
jason says:
fun article!
October 8th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Stephen Tiano says:
Brings back memories of when I got my first Macintosh. Palatino and Avant Garde were my mmediae favorites. The first two types I liked enough to add to the fonts that came with my Mac were Futura and Adobe Garamond. Still like those two for some book design–like when the book calls for it.
Interestingly, I just used Rosewood on the cover of a book and as a drop initial cap for chapter openers of the same book. This book had a bit of a Western feel that I think Rosewood worked with nicely.
And I blogged recently about some free typefaces suitable for book layout work. I’d be interested in what anyone thinks about them.
No matter what, tho’, I think the material must dictate what types a designer uses.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Stephen Tiano says:
Niki, got your thanks. You’re welcome. If you ever do an entry like this one above again, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
I’ve added DesignO’Blog to my blogroll and invite you to take a gander at mine and, perhaps, add it to your blogroll.
October 10th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
binocle says:
No intend to be rude… but, what a boring list of typefaces.
Almost all are among the most uninteresting traditionnal typefaces you can pick.
So much incredible typefaces out there these days, by great contemporary type designers and you choose the basic set that comes with every mac?
October 16th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Natalie says:
Graet post mate. Keep them coming….
October 31st, 2008 at 8:06 am
Lee Munroe says:
Nice post and nice idea. I can’t get enough of Georgia these days
November 2nd, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Phil Brangers says:
I have become a huge Palatino fan as of late. Why no love for Comic Sans…j/k
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:16 am
Kelley says:
I just love the combination of Georgia headings and verdana text.
It’s very much used and not unique at all, but it never fails!
November 27th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Cryptmod says:
I think the suggestions are very good, but it also depends on the font size sellected, so for instance I prefar Garamond size 12 to Verdana 12, but I prefer Verdana 10 to Garamond 12. Palatino 11 is also good for me. Just
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