Your favourite font choices

[Bobby Henderson]

For body text in normal sizes, I think that Garamond is hard to beat for most books and similar material. It is very readable and also quite beautiful.

That really depends on the version of Garamond being used. There is a bunch of them and most look noticeably different from other Garamonds. I really dislike the Monotype variant of Garamond often bundled in Microsoft Office. I think it's the ugliest of all Garamonds. IMHO anyone using should at least consider downloading Cormorant Garamond or EB Garamond from Google Fonts for a free alternative.

ITC Garamond has been fairly popular over the years. It is better for some large display size uses rather than book use; the lowercase characters are large in relation to its capitals. The large x-height can make it more difficult to read as body copy. ITC Garamond is the "friendliest" looking for all its rounded parts. Berthold Garamond is pretty stern looking by comparison; Adobe bundled Garamond BE in early versions of Illustrator.

I think Adobe's own Garamond Pro is arguably the best looking out of Garamonds available in digital form. It's probably the most used Garamond in professional graphics and typesetting situations due to its availability in Adobe applications. In the 2000's Adobe released the Garamond Premiere Pro family. It has some subtle, slightly more natural looking, almost calligraphic touches to it compared to the original Adobe Garamond variant. The package has 34 OpenType fonts covering everything from caption sizes to headlines. It was available as a bonus goodie for people who bought Creative Suite 2. It's also available via the Adobe Fonts service.

Bembo is also a popular typeface for body copy in books. Minion Pro, another Adobe typeface, is also popular for long document use.

Times New Roman isn't good for books because it was designed for the narrow columns used in newspapers. It becomes harder to read in wider column widths (though I cannot say exactly why).

One of the problems with Times and Times New Roman is the letters don't often space together very well. Whenever I have to set something in Times I often have to do all kinds of kerning adjustments. There are other "transitional" and "modern" serif typefaces that are prone to spacing issues.

For print material, sans serif typefaces are not really good for body text, although they are considered to be more readable than serif typefaces for web pages and other text intended to be read on a screen. I would not want to read a book set in Helvetica, Univers, or Gill Sans, but they excellent for things like transit signs.

Sans serif typefaces are very popular for various kinds of advertising use. I rely on them more often than not in sign design versus using serif faces, especially for fabricated things like lighted channel letters.

Newer sans serif typefaces are becoming more specialized for their use cases. In the past most sans serif fonts would by default be geared for small point size use on printed pages. Things like ink traps were commonly incorporated into the glyph designs. When such letters are blown up to giant sizes, as they are in sign design, the ink traps become very noticeable and visually illogical. Now type designers and type companies are releasing sans serif typefaces that can be used big without any consequence. For instance, the 2010 release of New Haas Grotesk was a revival of Max Miedinger's original designs of what became Helvetica. It has separate Text and Display versions of its font weights. Monotype's 2019 release of Helvetica Now was even more ambitious, featuring Display, Text and Micro versions. The fonts also have a greater number of alternate characters and other features. I've used Helvetica Now Display on a few projects; the lettering does look good set really large.

Helvetica is well known for its use in the New York City subway way-finding sign system. Helvetica Now would be a decent upgrade. But I wish the sign panels could be taller to allow more line spacing. A lot of the signs in that sign system look very crowded.

Helvetica is not the best choice for something like traffic or highway signs due to the more "closed" nature of the letters. Typefaces like Gill Sans or Frutiger have wider openings in letters like "C" or "G." Here in the US the old Series Gothic typeface has been the default. A major update to the MUTCD manual is going to happen, which may impose greater limits on where and how the alternative Clearview Highway typeface can be used.

[Jay Glaus]

Wingdings

I don’t know, hard to say depends on what I’m doing and what look I’m going for. I can say most signs I’ve made I use Arial Rounded Bold. Looks nice and easy to read.

[Bobby Henderson]

You're making signs? As in commercial signs for businesses?

Rounded sans serif typefaces have limited use for sign projects. Unless the rounded effect on the stems is subtle the letters can convey a comical or cutesy vibe. It all comes down to the typeface. For instance, Brandon Grotesque has rounded corners and stems, but the rounding is small and subtle. Brandon Grotesque has an obvious style and is not "neutral" looking, but it is versatile enough in its feel that it works in many kinds of uses. Arial Bold Rounded looks appropriate for a child day care center.

IIRC there are no other rounded weights of Arial than the Bold version. That makes it pretty limiting. Helvetica Rounded and VAG Rounded have more weights from light to very bold. There's a lot of other rounded sans serif typefaces, including some freely available fonts.

I don't think I've ever used Arial Rounded Bold in a sign project ever. It's a very rare occasion for me to use any other version of Arial in a sign design, and that's only when some customer provided artwork dictates the typeface choice. Arial is harsh and ugly enough on its own, but when I see it used on signs the lettering is often squeezed or stretched out of its normal proportions, crammed into some limited space. That makes Arial even more visually revolting. Arial is the official typeface of bad sign design.