What font do fish fear the most? Gill Sans
August 15, 2014 7:23 PM Subscribe
What's the favorite font of Bender and Zoidberg? It's Futura, Ma.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:54 PM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:54 PM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]
A sans-serif face walks into the street and is hit by a Swiss Modernist truck. The carnage is grotesk… but you know, akzidenz happen.
posted by porn in the woods at 8:00 PM on August 15, 2014 [16 favorites]
posted by porn in the woods at 8:00 PM on August 15, 2014 [16 favorites]
Wow. Tracks Type and Norwester are pretty lovely...
posted by artof.mulata at 8:20 PM on August 15, 2014
posted by artof.mulata at 8:20 PM on August 15, 2014
Everybody sing along!
Elementary.
...and this is almost mandatory.
For all your punning needs, here come the Ele-fonts.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:22 PM on August 15, 2014
Elementary.
...and this is almost mandatory.
For all your punning needs, here come the Ele-fonts.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:22 PM on August 15, 2014
All of them either painfully thin, or straight from the '40s.
I mean, seriously, fuck too-skinny fonts. Over and done. Tired and tedious. We get it, Apple and Google lost their shit when Microsoft made metro and some semi-popular idiot figured out how to get a pic to stretch across the whole tumblr side to side. Get the fuck over it. Go do something interesting and new with your life, that bandwagon has trundled on.
The 40's fonts are pretty cool, tho - mostly sullied by being used in advertisements aimed at hipsters, but still cool.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:47 PM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
I mean, seriously, fuck too-skinny fonts. Over and done. Tired and tedious. We get it, Apple and Google lost their shit when Microsoft made metro and some semi-popular idiot figured out how to get a pic to stretch across the whole tumblr side to side. Get the fuck over it. Go do something interesting and new with your life, that bandwagon has trundled on.
The 40's fonts are pretty cool, tho - mostly sullied by being used in advertisements aimed at hipsters, but still cool.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:47 PM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
Dogs and daughters fear Gill Sans, too.
posted by elsietheeel at 8:55 PM on August 15, 2014 [6 favorites]
posted by elsietheeel at 8:55 PM on August 15, 2014 [6 favorites]
Some good fonts here, as well as in the 2013 and 2012 lists, but it's all kind of "this is what 21st Century typography SHOULD be" stuff. Yes, I came of age in the era of Bookman and Brush Script and Bauhaus/Blippo and Eurostile and Kabel and, yes, even Cooper Black (before it became 'the Garfield Font'). It was a simpler - no - more elegant - no - DIFFERENT time.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:09 PM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:09 PM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
If there are any font foundries reading this, feel free to use Apocalypse Neue as the name for your next font.
posted by furtive at 9:21 PM on August 15, 2014 [8 favorites]
posted by furtive at 9:21 PM on August 15, 2014 [8 favorites]
I just spent the last hour looking at fonts, examining the nuanced differences, trying to find the perfect one.
I should show myself out before this gets out of hand.
Wait, what do you mean there's no exit?
Help!
posted by C'est la D.C. at 9:34 PM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
I should show myself out before this gets out of hand.
Wait, what do you mean there's no exit?
Help!
posted by C'est la D.C. at 9:34 PM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
What a lovely page to just scroll down and let it all wash over you.
A propos of not a whole lot: how do Americans pronounce the word 'neue'?
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:00 AM on August 16, 2014
A propos of not a whole lot: how do Americans pronounce the word 'neue'?
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:00 AM on August 16, 2014
how do Americans pronounce the word 'neue'?
Wildebeest.
posted by Chitownfats at 3:43 AM on August 16, 2014 [5 favorites]
Wildebeest.
posted by Chitownfats at 3:43 AM on August 16, 2014 [5 favorites]
...how do Americans pronounce the word 'neue'?
Well, this American pronounces it NOY-uh.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:47 AM on August 16, 2014 [1 favorite]
Well, this American pronounces it NOY-uh.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:47 AM on August 16, 2014 [1 favorite]
On the fonts presented...Most of them hit me as being highly derivative of each other. A few, though, hit me as immediately usable. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I tried to download a couple and discovered that some of these "free" fonts actually cost money. For instance...Campton. Turns out, it's $250. From what I can tell, it was never available free.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:53 AM on August 16, 2014
posted by Thorzdad at 4:53 AM on August 16, 2014
I read on the blue about how you only need two styles. This is, therefore, ridiculous overkill.
posted by clvrmnky at 5:23 AM on August 16, 2014
posted by clvrmnky at 5:23 AM on August 16, 2014
Thorzdad, for many designers, "free" means “I found it on a web/FTP site somewhere, I'll pay for it eventually, honest”.
A company I know is very proud of its logo and full visual identity done by $some_online_designer using the ‘wonderful free font’ Aaux Pro. Turns out that licensing the font alone would be roughly the same amount as the logo designer got paid.
posted by scruss at 5:41 AM on August 16, 2014
A company I know is very proud of its logo and full visual identity done by $some_online_designer using the ‘wonderful free font’ Aaux Pro. Turns out that licensing the font alone would be roughly the same amount as the logo designer got paid.
posted by scruss at 5:41 AM on August 16, 2014
Turns out that licensing the font alone would be roughly the same amount as the logo designer got paid.
Industry Eats Own Head
posted by Trochanter at 6:26 AM on August 16, 2014
Industry Eats Own Head
posted by Trochanter at 6:26 AM on August 16, 2014
A lot of these are awesome. Many are similar, yes, but choosing the right typeface is all about barely perceptible subtleties, so that's a good thing AFAIC.
I don't much like this "pay with a tweet" hoop a lot of them make you jump through, however. I'm gonna have to set up a twitter account -- with zero followers -- just to download their font. Worth it?
posted by Sys Rq at 7:03 AM on August 16, 2014
I don't much like this "pay with a tweet" hoop a lot of them make you jump through, however. I'm gonna have to set up a twitter account -- with zero followers -- just to download their font. Worth it?
posted by Sys Rq at 7:03 AM on August 16, 2014
So my question is, where are all the best Fraktur fonts?
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:58 AM on August 16, 2014
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:58 AM on August 16, 2014
Why does it say they're free when they are not free? I read scruss's comment and that doesn't really explain it...
posted by sidereal at 9:21 AM on August 16, 2014
posted by sidereal at 9:21 AM on August 16, 2014
A lot of them are only free for personal and/or nonprofit use but not commercial use. But there are a few that are just straight up not at all free, or fonts where you can't tell what the license actually is on the linked download site - in the case of Medio, all relevant information on the site was in Japanese text, but luckily it was also on FontSquirrel which spelled out the licensing. I'm really paranoid about font licensing and I've got the spreadsheet to prove it. I did actually buy one, because dang, you can't pass up Airbag for $5 for the full license.
posted by jason_steakums at 1:07 PM on August 16, 2014
posted by jason_steakums at 1:07 PM on August 16, 2014
Campton has two free weights available.
(Just glad that our org. licensed Avenir for our logo and as our house font. It's nice to use, and most everything else I can get by with either regular fonts that come with OSX or occasional free display fonts. Our last designer was kinda shruggo about licensing, since he had bought a ton of font licenses for commercial use for his machine and then pretty much everything else he'd find some close-enough free font and modify it pretty extensively with Illustrator anyway. But it means that every time someone's like, "Why can't we just use XX that we used in the Awards show last year?" I have to say, "Well, I don't have Didot licensed at that weight, and anyway it was a path trace with changes that would probably take me about 30 hours to get done in order for it to match…")
posted by klangklangston at 12:25 PM on August 18, 2014
(Just glad that our org. licensed Avenir for our logo and as our house font. It's nice to use, and most everything else I can get by with either regular fonts that come with OSX or occasional free display fonts. Our last designer was kinda shruggo about licensing, since he had bought a ton of font licenses for commercial use for his machine and then pretty much everything else he'd find some close-enough free font and modify it pretty extensively with Illustrator anyway. But it means that every time someone's like, "Why can't we just use XX that we used in the Awards show last year?" I have to say, "Well, I don't have Didot licensed at that weight, and anyway it was a path trace with changes that would probably take me about 30 hours to get done in order for it to match…")
posted by klangklangston at 12:25 PM on August 18, 2014
Thorzdad, for many designers, "free" means “I found it on a web/FTP site somewhere, I'll pay for it eventually, honest”.
~looks sheepishly at the drawer of CDs filled with fonts...
Y'don't say?
posted by Thorzdad at 2:11 PM on August 18, 2014 [2 favorites]
~looks sheepishly at the drawer of CDs filled with fonts...
Y'don't say?
posted by Thorzdad at 2:11 PM on August 18, 2014 [2 favorites]
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Arial
posted by aydeejones at 7:37 PM on August 15, 2014 [3 favorites]