20 typefaces to start a designers career

[andywall]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

I am in the process of purchasing a number of type licences for a London University. The idea is to limit the number of typefaces available for design students enabling them to be familiar with around 20 families.
Rather than pick them myself I would like to have a broad input into the final pickings.
Please could you post typefaces that you personally feel are indispensable to the modern designer.Ideally you could list your top 20. i will be posting a chart of deigners top 20 typerfaces on www.fatears.co.uk in the near future. Andy wall

[seanglenn]

MetaPlus (FontShop)
Helvetica Neue (Adobe)
Mrs. Eaves (Emigre)
Gotham (Hoefler Type Foundry)
20th Century (Monotype)
Base (Emigre)
Agency (Font Bureau)
Simian (House Industries)
Agenda (Font Bureau)
OCR-B (Adobe)
Formata (Adobe)
Caxton (Adobe)
Scala Sans (FontShop)

These are my favorite "useful" fonts. A mix of display and text fonts. There are far more that I use regularly, but mostly because of specific client requests.

[plainclothes]

since you said starting a design career, I would first
procure the classics. a collection including full families of
strong old style, transitional, modern (though I never
use them), grotesk, egyptian, and humanist typefaces
would provide you with a lot of possibilities. for the
sake of contemporaneity, you might throw in a few
recent designs such as the aforementioned Gotham or
Scala Sans/Serif (or Seria for more delicate work).
expand any of the catagories according to taste and
you have a highly versatile library.

[trae]

Just 20 families? Heartless.

These are always loaded:

Adobe Garamond
Goudy
the aforementioned Helvetica Neue
Univers
Futura

Frutiger, Bodoni, Cheltenham, Meta, Caslon and Clarendon I return to often enough to qualify as can't-live-without's. Obviously we haven't updated the library in a while but still, I can't see how anyone can not have these guys.

Out of curiosity, are there any worthwhile scripts out there?

[lettertiep]

hmmm, this is what I should consider:

Akzidenz Grotesk BQ
Univers
Frutiger Next (or Avenir?)
Today Sans (or Syntax / Gill Sans?)
The Sans
Trade Gothic (or News Gothic/Vectora?)
Futura
Minion
Palatino
Berthold Baskerville (or Storm's John Baskerville / Monotype Bulmer)
Filosofia
Lexicon nr2 ($$$)
Officina Sans & Serif (or the FF Info series)
Adobe Caslon
Bembo (or HTF Requiem)
Stempel Garamond
Joanna (or Scala?)
Clarendon (or Giza?)

and another two...

I'm sure I forgot some important ones, and maybe some that are more contemporary...
There's a whole lot of choice out there...

[kristin]

Funny, nobody's mentioned Comic Sans yet.

;)

[trae]

I was waiting for that!

Font Diner's Sparkly (which I love, incidentally) seems to have crept into an awful lot of arsenals... I guess it would be wise to include some retro stuff.

[jfp]

Just don't take Frutiger Next, take the original Frutiger or Myriad. The Next version is so bad.

[eomine]

Hmm, what's so bad about Frutiger Next, J-F?
The new italics look too much like Myriad, but
is it enough to say that it is such a bad thing?

[plainclothes]

Out of curiosity, are there any worthwhile scripts out
there?

Adobe's Bickham is an elegant design, and well
accompanied by beginnings, endings, and flourishes.

JFP, I would also be interested in your thoughts on
Frutiger Next. I haven't had the opportunity to look it
over, but I was hoping it would be a well executed
update to the family. this might constitute a new
thread, but it is certainly relevant to basic type library
concerns.

[jfp]

start a new topic to explain more! in two words: bad widths, bad spacing, strange letterforms, etc.

[seanglenn]

Personally, I prefer Monotype's 20th Century to Futura in every respect. I'd recommend that over Futura any day.

[jay]

20th Century is so last millennium, don't you know?

(Sorry.)

[Joe Pemberton]

Andrew, this is really an interesting premise. Is the limit 20
because of budget? I think if you hand-picked 100 typefaces
you'd have a great start.

In my school we had the entire Bitstream library and some
basics form Adobe. The result was first-year students all
crowding around the bitstream poster looking for a cool,
different font and ending up with Copperplate (gasp!) or
Bank Gothic (egads!) or worse; Mistral, Hobo, Handel or
Balloon gothics (pow! biff! splat! oof!).

In those early years, design students are so caught up
trying to find what's cool, that they don't learn what works.
(I know there are always exceptions...)

My school has since purchased the entire HTF library,
kudos to them.

[John Hudson]

You know, I'm not sure I can think of 20 typefaces that I would recommend as a beginning library. Once you get beyond a small number of solid text faces and a couple of good titling and sans serif designs, you quickly get into that area in which the right typeface to have is the right typeface for a particular project. Take script faces, for example: I can suggest a number of good ones, i.e. types that are well designed and executed, in a variety of different styles, but I don't think any of them necessarily belong in a beginner library because each tends to be particularly suited to such a narrow range of work.

On the seriffed text typeface front, I would suggest selecting one example from each of the major historical styles: one Venetian, one French renaissance, one Dutch oldstyle, one neo-classical, one romantic, etc. I would try to avoid the more obvious choices, e.g. Mardersteig's Dante instead of Bembo, Monotype Bullmer instead of Baskerville.

[jay_wilkinson]

i think 20 type faces is perfect. this is what i tell my class to begin with. the idea that you need hundreds of typefaces is ridiculous. when i was in school i had thousands upon thousands of bad typefaces. i hoarded anything i could get. this only helped confuse me when it came to choosing an appropriate face. it was a breath of fresh air to just delete them all off my hard drive. i only use about 10 or so at any moment in my career. type can be tricky and hard to deal with. it is best to have fewer faces and understand the ins and outs of each one. this is the only way one can expect to master a typeface and type in general.

i think it is also important to avoid display faces. these can be made individual depending on the project and current aesthetic. i make all of my own display faces or i am at least very picky about a display face made by someone else. no matter how trendy and cool the display face is you will look back in 10 years and think to your self "what the hell was i thinking"

anyway here is the list of classics i use.

akzidenz grotesk bq
helvetica neue
avenir (or futura, both are geometric sans, i prefer avenir)
frutiger
trade gothic
franklin gothic
optima
bodoni (or didot but not filosofia)
adobe garamond
adobe caslon
minion
hoefler
dante
sabon
perpetua
requiem (or bembo)
centaur
clarendon
shelly (or snell roundhand)
fette fraktur (or goudy text)

[anonymous]

I think that limiting the list to 20 faces is an excellent idea. It is a good way to teach typography. With a limited selection students can see how principles work in all of the typefaces you select. It is an excellent way to have them compare and contract the strengths of each face.

Becuase of that I would make my list from historic sources. Students would see the evolution of type, and see how that evolution happened as they used the faces.

Without putting a ton of time considering the faces I'll throw up a list.

Blackletter
Centaur
Janson
HTF Requiem
Bembo
Caslon
Garamond
Baskerville
Palantino
HTF Didot
Perpetua
Electra
Clarendon
Akzidenz Grotesque
Helvetica Neue
Futura
Franklin Gothic
Trade Gothic
Poetica
Shelly

OK, its a rough list, but it has some solid faces that would be good to learn principles with.

[hdschellnack]

In no particular order

01 > Neue Helvetical
(it's a classic and still modern)

02 > FF DIN
(I really really really love the facelessness of this font, sorry)

03 > Clarendon
(It's so brutal and primitive, I love it -- Belizio is nice as well)

04 > Thesis Sans
(THE perfect Corporate Font, a must have. I love Luc(as) work)

05 > Garamond Pro OTF or NeueSabon
(Best for setting text. GaramondPro is such a nice redesign, and NeueSabon, although not a Sabon, imo, is a verrrrry nice Garamondesque typeface as well, wish I had the $$$ to buy it.)

06 > Myriad Pro OTF
(Great alternative to all those Frutigers, Helveticas and Akzidenz... and the OTF multilangual functionality is beautiful. Great font.)

08 > Mrs Eaves OTF
(Sooooo cute. So cute. Sooooooooo cute)

09 > FF OCR or FF Letter Gothic
(For those cool and mechanical designs. Not as cold as the originals, but more versatile)

10 > Rotis Sans or SemiSans
(Jeez, I hat the Rotis, but when learning typography there is no way around it -- and it still looks nice for many designs that try to be clean and efficient.)

11 > Futura
(Overused, yeah, but you gotta have it. Lovelovelove the Caps. Instant Warmth, somehow.)

12 > Scala
(Very nice font - legible yet different. Quadraat would be solid as well. The Scala Sans is a nice alternative to the ThesisSans, more quirky yet not as monstrously complete...)

13 > TAZ III OTF
(De Groot is a monster, this font rocks. Again, wish I had the money right now. Great stuff.)

14 > Univers
(Classic. And nice to play with. Look at Emil Ruders work with that single font -- amazing).

15 > Bauer Bodoni
(Must-have-classicism for your students. And great to play with in Display-size)

16 > Franklin Gothic or Bureau Grotesque
The strong and strudy workhorses. Also, you can use Franklin to let your students do a bit Brodyism.

17 > Bell Gothic or Interstate
Looking modern yet not too modern. Nice for Corporate stuff, although lacking in some departments (Caps, Ligaturs, OSFs). Both nice because of their not-too-cold-coldness. Used ALL-CAPS-Bell for a CD just some months ago, it just was perfect.


18 > Jenson Pro OTF or Warnock Pro or Kepler
More older-looking quirky text-fonts. OTF rocks.

19 > Thesis Serif or Thesis Mono
The serif is just beautiful for short texts, the Mono has a more lively approach to the coldness of OCR and Letter Gothic.

20 > Zapfino CD
wonderful Toy. Next best thing to being a calligraphic genius yourself :-D. (Which, alas, I ain't)

And a whole buch of those endless TTF-Freefonts available on the net, just to have some plain fun with (which is why some

[keith_tam]

Here's my list of 20:

Minion Pro
Myriad Pro
Sabon Next
Monotype Baskerville (or Berthold)
HTF Didot
Perpetua
Monotype Gill Sans
Berthold Akizidentz Grotesk
Thesis Sans
Swift
ITC Charter
FF Meta
PMN Caecilia
Adobe Caslon Pro
FB Miller
Adobe Syntax
ITC Franklin Gothic
Bitstream Futura
Monotype Bembo
Snell Rounhand

Maybe this is my wish list... I only have five of these myself. I tried to be as unbiased as possible. These are mostly text typefaces, except Snell Roundand (which I think is the best copperplate script ever created!). It's difficult to include display typefaces in a list of just 20.

[keith_tam]

Incidentally, Andrew, you should look into Adobe's Type Classics for Learning. It has most of the OpenType Pro fonts in it: Caslon, Garamond, Jenson, Minion, Myriad, Warnock, Utopia... plus other extremely useful fonts from Adobe. Very good value. I bought it just before I graduated! It's only a 1 computer license though, but I think you could get site licenses for the school.

URL:
http://www.adobe.com/education/ed_products/typeclassics.html

[jay_wilkinson]

get a hold of the 1000 crazy truetype typefaces CD or anything free you can find on the net. almost anything with the precursor 100% fun and free would be great for teaching students the real value of type. when it comes right down to it the only typefaces worth buying are minstrel, brush script or comic sans. <joke>

[keith_tam]

I don't feel comfortable with the idea of students downloading free fonts off the 'net for their projects. More often than not they end up using something really badly made without even realizing that it is not a 'professional quality' font. It's dangerous. It's such a bad influence for them because they'll end up thinking that fonts are free and anyone can make fonts. Not a good idea. Though I think it's also a typography instructor's duty to teach their students how to discern the differences between well and badly made typefaces, and about the legalities of typeface licensing.

[keith_tam]

Sorry, Jay, I guess you were being sarcastic about it!

[jay_wilkinson]

yeah, i was kidding... sorry, i just could resist

[hrant]

> Once you get beyond a small number of solid text faces and a couple of good titling and sans serif designs, you quickly get into that area in which the right typeface to have is the right typeface for a particular project.

Smart analysis.

--

> this is what i tell my class

You have a class?!
I'm not sure if I'm encouraged, or scared. ;-)

hhp