Posted on Aug 12th, 2008.
Categorised as opinion, type, design.
Inspired by a recent post by Veerle Pieters, and numerous others before, I decided to make my own list of my ten favorite typefaces.
Before we start, I reckon that this list could be different tomorrow. Maybe the family I purchased this weekend, Reykjavik One, would be in there. But these are my choices for today.
As I’m still more a researcher than a designer, and thus have to work with long texts rather than short fragments, nine of of ten are fonts that are suited for body text. I can’t really tell if I’m rather a sans or a serif person, and the list reflects this: 5 serifs, and 4 sanses.
Today I’ll start with the serifs. Tomorrow, or the day after, I’ll be giving you my body sanses, and the one remaining font — actually also a sans.
All right, here we go.
Musee
Dinos Dos Santos, 2006
What can you say about this? A beauty with a classical elegance. I love it soft curves, which also makes me not using it too often. Musee looks so lovely and friendly, that I cannot use it for any text in which I’m trying to make an argument, or try to convince someone.
Great side aspects of Musee is that it comes with a set of ornament characters, and that it has both an italic and cursive version. And boy, the cursive is a handsome one!
Figural
Oldrich Menhart and Michael Gills, 1940 - 1992
Figural is the opposite of Musee. It has an Eastern European harshness to it, making it stern and stubborn. I should set mu thesis in it.
Figural is designer by Michael Gills, based on a 1940 design by Czechoslovakian designer Oldrich Menhart.
Mrs Eaves
Zuzana Licko, 1996
Mrs Eaves is amazing. I never use it, because it looks so old fashioned, and after all, I work in ICT and new media. But it’s upright characters are so incredibly beautiful.
Tarocco
Stefan Hattenbach, 2000
Tarocco is another one of those timeless beauties. I can look at it for ages. Designed by Stefan Hattenbach, based on the 1910 Nordisk Antikva by Waldemar Zachrisson. If this is ‘Nordic Design’, then I want more of it.
Eidetic Neo
Rodrigo Cavazos, 1998-2000
I first spotted this typeface in a booklet for a Brussels Art Fair, and I immediately fell in love with it.
Even though I think it looks better in smaller sizes, I tend to use it a lot. It’s only drawback is that I really dislike its sans counterpart (Eidetic Modern), and I don’t know what other typeface to combine it with.
Anyway, here’s a list to the identifont pages of the above-mentioned typefaces. There you can find more information, and a link to vendors.
Tomorrow, or some other day soon, I’ll present you my four favorite sans-serif types, and one display font.
Edit: part 2
Great list Sander, thanks for sharing your favorite serifs.
All of the above font types are beautiful, I especially like Mrs Eaves & Tarocco. I haven’t seen the type Eidetic Neo, can you display it a bit larger so we can see the type?
For serifs: this is a small list of my favorites:
- Baskerville Classico™ Font Family
- Arnhem by Fred Smeijers
- Adobe Garamond Pro
- Linotype Georgia
- Adobe Minion Pro
Hello Sander. Ha, you also mentioned some lovely fonts. I couldn’t find a good image of Eidetic Neo, but you can view it here (http://www.emigre.com/EF.php?fid=91) or follow the identifont link to get a taste.
Hi Sender!
Thanks for including Tarocco on your list.
Best regards
/Stefan H
Sander it is, nothing else, sorry. Cheers
:)
[…] days ago I started publishing the first part of my list of 10 favorite typeface families. Today the second part, featuring the sans […]