There are 10,728 font families available on Fontshop.com – one of the largest font shops online. A new Macintosh computer will only have 140 fonts pre-installed, and 164 for Windows.
Here’s a selection of typefaces over the course of 120 years. Could this post inspire you to look for new refreshing font choices for your brand? Look at the bottom for further guidance on font hunting.
Alert: To prevent headaches, Comic Sans and Lobster are banned from this post.
News Gothic – 1900
Designer: Morris Fuller Benton
Foundry: American Typefounders
Classification: Sans-serif
Usage: Star Wars opening crawl, ABBA, Lady Gaga’s ‘The Frame Monster’ artwork
Johnston – 1910
Designer: Edward Johnston
Classification: Humanist san-serif
Usage: London Underground
Gill Sans – 1920
Designer: Eric Gill
Foundry: Monotype
Classification: Humanist Sans-serif
Usage: BBC, John Lewis, Church of England’s prayer book
Times New Roman – 1930
Designer: Stanley Morison & Victor Morison
Foundry: Monotype
Classification: Serif/Old-style
Usage: Book publishing, The Times paper, Missing pet posters
Fairfield – 1940
Designer: Rudolf Ruzicka
Foundry: Linotype
Classification: Serif
Usage: Frances Ha film design type & website
Univers – 1950
Designer: Adrian Frutiger
Foundries: Deberny & Peignot
Classification: Neo-grotesque sans-serif
Usage: eBay, RAF, City of Westminster street signs, Swiss International Airlines, Ordnance Survey
Eurostile – 1960
Designer: Aldo Novarese
Debut foundry: Nebiolo
Classification: Sans-serif
Usage: Casio, Toshiba, Nokia, Subaru, Opel, French Connection
ITC Avant Garde – 1970
Designer: Herb Lubalin & Tom Carnase
Foundry: International Typeface Corporation
Classification: Geometric sans-serif
Usage: Adidas, Nutella, Mobil, Macy’s Lubalin’s logo for Avant Garde Magazine
Avenir – 1980
Designer: Adrian Frutiger
Foundry: Monotype
Classification: Sans-serif
Usage: Aol, Nationwide, Spotify, huge Iamsterdam sign
Meta – 1990
Designer: Erik Spiekermann
Foundry: FontFont
Classification: Humanist san-serif
Usage: Stockholm Metro signage, Deutsche Bundespost (German Post Office)
Gotham – 2000
Designer: Tobias Frere-Jones
Foundry: Hoefler & Co.
Classification: Geometric sans-serif
Usage: Obama’s HOPE campaign
Open Sans – 2010
Designer: Steve Matteson
Foundry: Ascender Corporation
Classification: Humanist sans-serif
Usage: Popular font choice for web design
Font Shops
The best font shops online are Fontshop, FontFont, Linotype & Monotype. Web-friendly fonts can be found on Google fonts and Adobe Typekit. Free fonts are usually very poor in quality whereas the more expensive ones are more likely to be proven to work well and have decent versatility – the spacing in-between the letters from free fonts tends to be dodgy. As there are so many fonts to choose from, I suggest you use the search filters to help you find your new font.
What the font is that?
Myfonts enables you to upload a screenshot and sometimes it will give you an accurate answer as to what font is in front of you. There is also a Google Chrome plugin called WhatFont which can be used to identify fonts while surfing on the web. https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
Not for the thousandth time!
Avoid fonts that you’ve seen far too many times. A step forward is to go for something different, new and refreshing. This could subconsciously motivate you too.
Image credit: Oxford Street sign in London, Shutterstock