Member and… Posted June 9, 2003 Share Posted June 9, 2003 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 Link to comment
Member sea… Posted June 9, 2003 Share Posted June 9, 2003 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. Link to comment
Member pla… Posted June 9, 2003 Share Posted June 9, 2003 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. Link to comment
Member tra… Posted June 9, 2003 Share Posted June 9, 2003 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? Link to comment
Member let… Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 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... Link to comment
Member kri… Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 Funny, nobody's mentioned Comic Sans yet. ;) Link to comment
Member tra… Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 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. Link to comment
Member jfp… Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 Just don't take Frutiger Next, take the original Frutiger or Myriad. The Next version is so bad. Link to comment
Member eom… Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 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? Link to comment
Member pla… Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 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. Link to comment
Member jfp… Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 start a new topic to explain more! in two words: bad widths, bad spacing, strange letterforms, etc. Link to comment
Member sea… Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 Personally, I prefer Monotype's 20th Century to Futura in every respect. I'd recommend that over Futura any day. Link to comment
Member jay… Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 20th Century is so last millennium, don't you know? (Sorry.) Link to comment
Member Joe… Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 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. Link to comment
Member Joh… Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 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. Link to comment
Member jay… Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 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) Link to comment
Member ano… Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 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. Link to comment
Member hds… Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 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 Link to comment
Member kei… Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 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. Link to comment
Member kei… Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 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 Link to comment
Member jay… Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 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> Link to comment
Member kei… Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 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. Link to comment
Member kei… Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 Sorry, Jay, I guess you were being sarcastic about it! Link to comment
Member jay… Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 yeah, i was kidding... sorry, i just could resist Link to comment
Member hra… Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 > 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 Link to comment
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