Desert Island Fonts - Round 1 | June 15, 2005
If you could only buy 6 fonts, what would they be?
John Hicks
Helvetica
It has to be doesn’t it? THE timeless classic - not the most beautiful typeface (more utilitarian), but certainly the most adaptable, and the full family is essential. Helvetica Neue Light has been overused on anything to do with health/lifestyle, but its still good.
Avenir
I’ve only recently cottoned on to this one, but works as good as a display font as it does for body text. What’s good enough for Veer…
Monark
A bit of Identikal goodness, this is the face I’ve adopted for my logotype, so that’s an must.
Apex Sans
The other sans-serif that I use. Thirstype’s contemporary sans-serif, but not one that will date too quickly. Hopefully this will be an Open Type font soon, and save the current nightmare of my font menus.
Mrs Eaves
I guess I had to include a serif in this list, so this gorgeous face from Emigre with it’s sumptuous ligatures gets my vote. What’s good enough for Radiohead…
Carta
A very useful dingbats font. Mainly map symbols, but many make a good starting point for little icons.
Josh Williams
Futura
If I were stuck with one sans serif font for the rest of my life, this would be it. No one ever got fired for using Futura in a logo. Maybe its not too creative, but you can’t argue with its elegance.
Ocean Sans
More people ask about my use of Ocean than any other font. You don’t see it used much at all, but it’s truly beautiful. Note the subtle diamonds on the “i” and “j”. We use the font at firewheeldesign.com for our headline text.
Elysium
Another Firewheel favorite… works great at large and small sizes. Great ligatures.
Mini 7
The quintessential pixel font. Gotta have this if you’re into digital design.
Odyssey
Quite possibly the best looking pixel font there is. If I have a little more space to work with, I’ll use Odyssey over Mini 7.
Dearest
Because sometime you’re going to need a script-ish font, and this is my current favorite.
Greg Storey
Myriad Pro
Take Helvetica and throw it in the trash. Myriad has long been my sans-serif pick up truck and no overuse by Apple websites is going to change that. With Myriad around there is simply no need to be using Helvetica or that awful Microsoft knockoff Arial.
Frutiger
If anything Frutiger makes the list because this was the primary typeface for Studio Archetype, which is my all time favorite web design shop. Frutiger is a nice change of pace from using Meta FF throughout the years.
Minion
It’s the only serif family that I care to use anymore. Unlike other Times New Roman forgeries, Minion has it’s own look and feel that gives off a nice hot metal type look from the days of academia. The small caps alternate makes titles a joy.
Bickham Script
There’s always a need for a good script font and after running through the gambit, Bickham continues to please the eye with it’s clean curves and plethora of alternate beginning and endings.
TV Nord
I love condensed type and EF Nord stands tall among other, more popular faces but this one has a killer ‘g’ and that makes it worth having alone.
FGC-DKD
I have tried several times to buy this font without success. Designed by an independent font designer who lives in Japan and doesn’t read/write English. I even enlisted the help of Steven from Typographi.ca and his global network but never got through.
Comment
What an interesting and for me timely article.
I’m new to the design side of web design and typography and fonts is an area I have much to learn about.
The links in Jon’s FAQ to two font sites has helped me start to find ‘cool’ fonts.
Thanks
David
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Wait a second - no comic-sans?
And you people call yourself designers.
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Trade Gothic Condensed
I’ve been using this font for years. The condensed version does it for me, I can take or leave the rest of the family.
Meta Plus and Meta Plus Caps
Another great all-rounder with some subtle little quirks that make it stand out.
Snell Roundhand
Reach for the scripty all-rounder. Not overly elegant this sweet little font is happily applied to most jobs that require script.
Compacta
Oh c’mon… you would!
LeMonde
Another font I er.. picked up many years ago. This is a large family and every variant is lovely. You could produce a whole set of fairly diverse literature without leaving the LeMonde family.
Garamond any cut
Tried and tested - we only have six fonts right? This old stalwart should plug the gaps nicely.
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The Helvetica Meditations!!!
http://typographi.com/001009.php
Myriad Pro is lovely.
Gill Sans Light but not bold - gets ugly as it gets bolder.
News Gothic - some lovely shapes
Gotham
Lucide Grande
Comment
Some safe ones…
Univers
Swift
Sabon
Frutiger
Celeste
Akzidenz Grotesk
Comment
Myriad
Frutiger
Futura
Mrs. Eaves
Garamond
The first five were easy. I’m torn on the last one. Script font? Display? I’m pretty open to the last option, it would depend upon my mood that day.
What an excellent post.
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I’ve always had a soft spot for Eurostyle
and Cooper Black
Neither is subtle, but formative years poring through Letraset catalogues have left their mark.
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I lean more towards graphic design, so luckily I don’t have to worry about chooisng “web-safe” fonts.
when building pages I generally use Verdana as my body font. It’s nice clean, and easy to use.
Headlines I like Trebuchet MS or a Georgia variant font
For pixel or bitmap fonts I use either Bitlow or Visitor. Two great pixel fonts that always look great, though bitlow is very limited.
other than that I try to go for unique fonts. Porcelain and Selfish from Misprinted Type are two of my favorites.
If I had to make a list of six essential fonts it might take a little while. I’m not very creative when it comes to font use on the web. I guess that’s one of the only problems I have with design.
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A desert island, you say? Easy.
Gilligan
Skippy
Ginger
Any two Howells
The Professor
…And Cirrus, by MaryAnne
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I would pick Copperplate on my gravestone. Because it is timeless, plus it makes me look important.
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When designing for the web I use Lucida Sans Unicode or Tahoma.
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Lisboa
Just a beautiful font, make me feel good just using it.
Trade Gothic
My default utilitarian font. I probably use this too much :D
Centaur
Great all-around serif face, great italics and small caps. Also has beautiful swashes.
Old Claude
Great for the quickie faux worn type look.
Voluta
My favorite script/handwritten face. Good set of alternates.
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I only need one, with its 5 variants: Computer Modern. Then I have serif, sans-serif and monotype all in one.
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I meant monospace but I’m sure you understood :-)
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Hmm…
My favorites are Courier New, Microsoft Sans Serif, Mistral, Monotype Corsiva, Papyrus, and Playbill.
Not.
I’m a Myriad Pro guy too…
Univers, News Gothic, Helvetica Neue - great font families.
TRAJAN Pro - a must have. Classic, elegant. Just a beatiful font.
Lucida Grande - great for the web.
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I think Amplitude could handle just about anything.
Caslon or something classic is necessary.
Mrs. Eaves is a personal favorite… but don’t abuse her. Keep her meaningful and beautiful.
I use Verdana for the web.
A clever Veer script… Hucklebuck maybe.
& Farao is hot!
But I would trade any for the extreme usabilty of Thesis.
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I’m not sure if Andy listed both John’s and Greg’s fonts in the order they sent them to him, but he listed mine in order… that said, I find it interesting that each of our top fonts is a utilitarian sans serif.
Nice.
Myriad would definitely have to win out if you needed a sans for large body copy use.
For me a lot of the pixel font usage has to do with the large amount of mobile UI design we’re doing right now. Most phones have real crappy fonts, so high-quality pixel fonts are a must-have for our work right now.
Good stuff, Andy.
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Zapf Humanst
Lucida Sans
Jenkins v2.0
Papyrus
Verdana
Trebuchet MS
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My five favorits:
Garamond, Optima, Franklin Gothic, Eurostile, Bodoni.
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I’d only need one: Bookman Old Style. Just plain ol’ good stuff. Reminds me of Benjamin Franklin for some reason.
In my humble and very unenlightened opinion, Papyrus is just too overused right now—I see it on everything. And come to think of it, I don’t know that I’ve ever actually seen a papyrus featuring that font, and I’ve been through the Cairo Museum three times. Hmmm….another mystery…
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I lied. Add Copperplate Gothic Bold. Veddy, veddy uppah clahss, if you know whaht I mean.
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Oh for Pete’s sake: I actually meant Book Antiqua, not Bookman Old Style. Speaking of Benjamin Franklin, I’ll bet tha—even at his age—his memory is better now than mine will ever be.
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most of you would be coding css/html without a monospace font -interesting… ;)
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Alright, I’ll jump in.
FF Kievit
A workhorse sans-serif that works well at all point sizes, especially small. Comes with a small caps style too which is essential when working with just about any typeface.
Mini
You always need a bitmap for something, and after all these years this is still my favorite for bitmaps. It doesn’t work well in Flash though, so I like to use FFF Corporate or the Miniml fonts for that.
Frutiger
A strong, solid sans-serif with a beautiful x-height that works well online.
Caslon
You’ll always need a good, strong body typeface for longer passages, so you may as well go with old faithful.
Interstate
Over used, but with good reason — it’s strong, reads well, and comes with a huge array of weights.
Comment
From my side I’d like to add some fonts which aren’t only nice, newspaper-headers-like and quite… official, but also free.
Vera Sans Mono
Pigiarniq
Yanone Kaffeesatz
Lido STF
Gara
Day Roman
District Thin and Cardo
With warm greetings from Saarbruecken, Germany,
Vitaly Friedman,
hp | Web-Dev-Bookmarks | { Web Developer’s Handbook }
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