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What are your favorite, most reliable, go-to fonts?


Patsfan99

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I'm just wondering what anyone out there considers their "go-to" fonts. you know, the ones that you find yourself going back to, especially when you're stuck, or the ones that are the first five or six that you try out in a project, mostly cause they've worked for you before....

I've got a bunch for illustration purposes, but I'm thinking more graphic design/ page layout purposes here... what are your staple fonts? the ones you couldn't live without?

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Great topic. I use a ton of fonts on a regular basis, but my job requires maximum legibility for copy on billboards. These are my "go-to guys".

serifs: Adobe Garamond Pro, Adobe Caslon Pro, Trajan, Felix Titling, Poppl Pontifex, Friz Quadrata, Book Antiqua

sans: Frutiger, Univers, Helvetica Neue, Akzidenz Grotesk, Dax, Din 1451 Engschrift, Nobel, Poppl Laudatio

script: Bickham Script, Spring, LHF Pilsner Script, LHF Sofia Script, Voluta Script

slab: Berthold City, LHF Mike's Block, LHF Full Block, Brothers

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Keeping in mind that a lot of my fonts are freebies and/or cheap knockoffs, and I enjoy doing custom lettering...

Serif: JuliusBlack/Serpentine, Trajan, Minion.

Sans: I agree with Joel on Frutiger, although a rival paper in town uses it for their headline font, but I can't stay mad at it for that. I also find myself using Glasgow, Myriad, Futura and Eurostile a lot. I'd love to use Dax more, but I don't have too many variations of it.

Script: Probably the ones I use the most are more modern script fonts, i.e. Magneto Bold, Lakeshore Drive, Airstream.

Slab: Definitely Aachen Bold/Aardvark.

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OLD STYLE / TRANSITIONAL

Adobe Garamond. Adobe Caslon. Adobe Jenson. Bembo. Cantaur. Minion. Trajan.

MODERN

Bodoni. Didot.

SANS

Trade Gothic. Akzidenz Grotesk. Univers. Helvetica Neue. DIN. Meta. News Gothic. Futura. Bell Gothic. Avenir.

SCRIPT

Johann Sparkling. Pilsner. Hand Written + Scanned + Live Traced.

You can do anything with ten-fifteen good fonts. I usually use the light version of a font to type body text, especially if it's a sans, which usually have a light weight. also make sure your body copy is not too large. I never type body over ten points unless the target audience is over fifty or something. Large body text looks horsey.

I still don't have a website, but I have a dribbble now! http://dribbble.com/andyharry

[The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the position, strategy or opinions of adidas and/or its brands.]

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Oh, you know, Comic Sans, Demonized... :D

In all seriousness:

Futura, Franklin Gothic, Frutiger, Friz Quadrata, Eurostile, Copperplate(to be honest), Gill Sans, Faktos(freeware font), Industria

I don't have a lot of good fonts on my computer, unfortunately. I need to buy some good ones once I actually have a job.

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Now HERE'S a nice topic!

I know where I work at, they used to use a modified version of Century Schoolbook and some type of stylized script for the "Tech" (click right here to find out about my company), and we still do in our re-done logo (which I actually had a hand in redesigning--but it ain't on that site yet), but lately, in a lot of our print literature, I've gotten everyone settled on the same page: Helvetica Condensed and, for a lot of our marketing, Zapfino or StephanieMarieJF.

Now...ask me what fonts I see the most at work and I can narrow it down to three: Trajan, Trade Gothic, and Helvetica.

Now, looking around at the things I see around me, I see DIN being used a helluva lot (check JetBlue out) too.

*Disclaimer: I am not an authoritative expert on stuff...I just do a lot of reading and research and keep in close connect with a bunch of people who are authoritative experts on stuff. 😁

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I did a little experimenting with other fonts for my sigs, but I kept coming back to italicized SerpentineDBol. I just like the way it looks - clean, yet bold and dynamic.

CCSLC signature.png

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  • 1 month later...

OK - so I'm going to sound like the novice here, but I usually stick with "Tahoma" - it's a nice overall font for just about everything. Easy to tell the zeroes from the O's, etc. I also like "Century Gothic" for the circular feel. I use "Eras Demi" from time to time as well.

Now, on websites, I prefer "Arial" for the main text because about 99.9% of the computers in the world have it & it keeps me from having to re-design every page just for the typefaces.

I've been re-designing my fantasy football website for next season and I decided to use "SF SportsNight Upright" (the non-slanted version of ESPN's font) for a lot of the buttons. They look very classy and kinda modern witout being unreadible. I make the buttons in MS Paint and saved them as gifs so I could take advantage of the transparency properties. It's actually surprising how good stuff in MS Paint looks when you have to shrink it down to fit nicely on websites - the people with 20/20 usually can't tell a difference from using a professional software program unless they really want to. I've always gotten very positive comments from our guys in the league. (Of course, I also use MS Excel for a lot of the stats, so you get a mixed bag of fonts at times (sigh).

Depending on the application, there are lots of nice fonts. Believe it or not, the "Star Trek" font on this website doesn't look too bad: http://www.geocities.com/edgelogo/

"Eurostile" isn't too bad either, although it comes across almost too modern at times, and can be a bit had to read when too small.

I've also been hooked on "OCR A Extended" a bit lately too - can't give a good reason why other than the fact that I am a programmer.

If I think of more examples, I'll let you know.

spacer.pngΒ Β 5-time Defending NL East ChampionsΒ spacer.pngΒ 

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I have been using Gotham Rounded Book quite a bit lately. Nice, easy to read and reminiscent of blueprint lettering (not hand lettering).

Nice one Josh!

Well it did come straight out of your mouth!

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Fenway Park.

Damn I love that font.

Billhead from Letterhead Fonts is also a favorite of mine. There's three versions that mix and match beautifully.

JeffB

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