20 typefaces to start a designers career

[jay_wilkinson]

if you are speaking to me hrant. the answer is yes in fact i do teach a class. and i have taught for a while now. fear for them.

[andywall]

I think everyones comments are very helpful. i think the one point I have to clarify is that we are talking about 20 typefaces that a designer should know as part of their job. Many graduate designers have not yet came to grips with more than, say,5 typefaces. The idea here is to push students into using a limited number of type designs, during certain projects, and see how their typographic awareness increases along with their knowledge of the '20 typefaces'. Ive already included comic sans, minstrel and brush script so there is no need to include them in future post! ;) On leaving university they should be able to identify each of the designs, and be able to adjust their use according to the project. Its OK to have a favourite type design, but worrying when they try to use it for the wrong job!

[antiuser]

Hmm...

Bembo
Centaur
Stempel Garamond
Caslon 540
Palatino
Electra
Minion
Bauer Bodoni
Clarendon
Optima
Futura
Avenir
Franklin Gothic
Akzidenz Grotesk
Univers
DIN 1451 / Mittelschrift
Scala
Officina
Shelley Script
Wilhelm Klingspor

[Miss Tiffany]

We are talking families, yes? Not just faces? This is impossible. So I would think of this as my "first" twenty as a student. I didn't even get a "real" scotch or transitional! The tragedy!!



SERIF Sabon Next ITC Bodoni (et al, 6, 12, 72) HTF Didot Gulliver Le Monde Courrier Tyfa Le Monde Livre Classic Walbaum Text Quadraat

SANS Neutraface Parisine Futura Serie BQ Vesta Akzidenz-Grotesk BQ DTL Nobel DynaGrotesk Teuton Critter

SCRIPT Sloop Edwardian Script

[Moore]

Lars book said all a designer needs is this:

http://www.lars-mueller-publishers.com/e/katalog/ausgaben_detail/081/081_helvetica.php

HELVETICA

[jfp]

ARIAL is really better and already on Mac and PC.

[Moore]

just to clarify... i was joking

[bieler]

Ah, the reference to Helveeta reminded me...

Anyone know of a source for those tee-shirts that say Helvetica but are set in Garamond?

[kentlew]

Gerald --

I don't know anything about any t-shirts.

In 1979, Jack Summerford got the assignment to design a poster for the largest type house in Dallas to promote then-new ITC Garamond. He set just one word, large, in red, spanning the width: "Helvetica" . . . set in ITC Garamond.

It's a classic. I've always loved it.

-- K.

[kentlew]

This poster was quite notorious in its day. I believe it's still widely cited in design histories. But for any youngsters who might not know it, here's an image.

[bieler]

Kent

Never looked finer. I recall a book on this very same topic. Best and worse typefaces as submitted by various typographers. Somewhere in the collection. Don't want to wake my wife up by rummaging around in the collection. But I recall there is a photo of someone wearing the tee-shirt. Though I don't know that it was the ITC version of Garamond.

[jfp]

There is another two Tshirts if I recall correctly:

1 done by FontFont with Helevtica in a Fraktur type or so. I'm sure Yves Peters can describe it better, as he worked at FontShop for a while.

2 and another one done by Linotype in answer: Helvetica white on Black Tshirt whith the baseline: Its not an Adobe font (who refer to the fact that most of Adobe collection are in fact Linotype faces...)

[Mark Simonson]

Helvetica white on Black Tshirt whith the baseline: Its not an Adobe font

You can get that from FontHaus.

[keith_tam]

I think that ITC Garamond campaign was such a brilliant idea. Simple and powerful and its a hilarious inside joke. Just love it. I want one of those tee-shirts! I would happily use ITC Garamond instead of Helvetica any day :-) It's so 80s! (I hate Helvetica, by the way ;-)

I know I lot of typographers/type designers can't stand ITC Garamond. Apart from the enormous x-height, the rounded treatment on absolutely everything is a bit much. I don't mind it as a display face for certain things. I wonder what you guys think of it? And why do you think Apple dropped their Apple Garamond Narrow (they redrew from the ITC condensed version which I think was a much more plausible type)? I think it was a stupid decision because it was such a strong element in their corporate identity. They were desperate to be more 'modern' I guess. But Myriad?! That's someone else's corporate type!

[hrant]

I'm not so sure I-Totally-Conked-Garamond isn't worse than Helvomita. I mean, the latter is certainly the village idiot (and one who persists in thinking he's a studmuffin), but the former is the insidious town charlatan. And can you really like the way "Macintosh" rendered out in it, with that domestic-abused "t" and such?

There are many depths to which one can disdain ITC Garamond. Some poeple only mind that it was called a Garamond, since its spirit is so distorted from the original. But that's too forgiving. You would want to go deeper and hate what it does to French culture: according to some people (like Mandel), a small x-height is a requirement of being a French font, and Garamond is the Frenchest of them all. And you might go deeper, into functionality, and hate the fact that it combines such gaudy proportions with features only fitting in a serious text face.

On the other hand, in terms of corporate indentity, I agree that shifting to Myriad was a horrible idea.

Have a good day! ;-)

hhp

[jfp]

The problem of ITC Garamond is not its big xheight and all others stuff but is model who is Jannon and jannon is not a Garamond.

ITC Garamond seems interpreted from the Monotype Garamond (from Jannon too), many details show that such the caps.

[hrant]

Some detailed history:
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/itc/garamond/

I think the ITC comes from Linotype:
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/itc-garamond/
But I also seem to remember a connection to Garamond #3, which is basically a reincarnation of the ATF cut.

--

As to the Jannon issue, of course you're right in terms of history, but it's interesting to consider what people actually think when they hear/see "Garamond". I suspect it's safe to say that when a person chooses a "Garamond" from the font menu, chances are better than 50% he'll get a Jannon - and of course not even realize what the hell that even means. Even among type people, Jannon-denial is alive and well. Check out this:
http://www.itcfonts.com/fonts/detail.asp?sku=ITC6214&AID=5671704&PID=939805
as well as the awkward ambivalence here:
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/simoncini-garamond/

hhp

[keith_tam]

Yes, Jean. It's not a Garamond at all. As a student, I was quite confused by the different versions of the supposedly 'Garamond'. At one point I was naive enough to think that ITC's version was THE Garamond! How silly was I? Yes, it does look more like a redrawing of Monotype's version. And now my favourite 'Garamond' is your Sabon Next!

Hrant, nice reference from MyFont. I always wondered about the Apple Garamond. You know what? I still have the TrueType Apple Garamond Narrow on my computer. It was bundled with my old Color StyleWriter printer. Bitstream did a nice job, I think. Much nicer than the original ITC. Quite a few other fonts were bundled with that printer, including Lucida Bright, Lubalin Graph, etc.

[keith_tam]

Compare: Apple's (Bitstream's) 80% condensed redrawing of ITC's Garamond and ITC's own 64% compressed Garamond Light Condensed... quite different, eh?

/image{Garamonds}

Of couse neither of these should be called 'Garamond'!

[keith_tam]

Sorry. Here's the image:

[markatos]

Sooo. Hope I am not being blasphemous by brining this up, but how come there are no bitmap fonts mentioned here?

Being a designer today invariably means that there is a rather huge potential you will have to design something for screen. Hence the need for a bitmap.

Even as a write this, I am hesitant since we are dealing with only 20. But I think adding Miniml's 'Standard' or Thirstype's 'Pixella' might be highly useful.

[anonymous]

hmmm, i remeber the shirt it was printet with:
*H e l l v e t i c a* in a fraktur type. black letters on a screaming-yellow shirt . fantastic! i think it was from fontshop

[marz]

***

[aszszelp]

~~~

[dberlowgone]

" The idea is to limit the number of typefaces available for design students enabling them to be familiar with around 20 families."

Goto: freshly installed operating system.
Open: design application of choice
Find: font menu
Pull down:See list?

You are done.

This is not a trivial recommendation as otherwise the students will have all these bundled families (the school will not be able to delete them), PLUS the 20 families you give them, and thus you will be defeated by such a plan.;) How? Wind blows, fire burns, students rebel. Tell them they can only use "these 20" and you'll see!

Cheers!