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Following up on yesterday’s post about how you learned to type, I stumbled across a Slate article called My Favorite Font, which surveys various authors about what font they use to compose new works. According to this article, font preference seems very tied to how the author learned to write — those who started on typewriters seem to prefer Courier fonts (which I abhor), and those who started on computers seem to prefer Times or various other serif fonts (now that’s more like it).
We’ve covered your favorite fonts before. But I have to admit, I don’t think I have a favorite font. I like Futura just fine, but that may just be Kubrick/Wes Anderson fanboyism (or moon plaque worship). I’m partial to Gill Sans lately, which is used in a lot of my company’s promotional literature. And looking at the Slate article, I think Hoefler Text is pretty nice. So while I have vaguely warm feelings for many fonts, I can definitely tell you some fonts I hate: Courier (sorry, everybody who seems to love it), Comic Sans, Impact, and Skia.
Read Slate’s My Favorite Font for more on writers’ favorite fonts. Also check out this bonus link from the newly-free New York Times: Douglas Coupland Luvs Helvetica. And if you have a least-favorite font, don’t give in to hate (because that leads to the Dark Side)…but please do share in the comments.
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I love Calisto and Georgia. But I abhor anything that wants to be taken seriously that’s written in Comic Sans or Papyrus. Especially emails that have the person’s name, work, phone number, etc, at the bottom in one of these fonts. It doesn’t make me think you are whimsical.
posted by Kelly on 9-26-2007 at 10:01 am
I’m not a fan of Courier either, but when people use “fun” fonts you can’t read without blowing them up to ridiculous proportions, I dislike that even more.
posted by Kathryn on 9-26-2007 at 10:08 am
I happen to love the papryrus font, but really hate arials for some reason.
posted by Korin on 9-26-2007 at 10:08 am
I was a Palatino man all through college while working on Macs. Got a corporate job after school and started using PCs which did not have Palatino. Now, when I see that font, I get nostalgic for college.
posted by Trevor on 9-26-2007 at 10:11 am
I can’t say I’m a big fan of Arials either. I do, however, enjoy a good Century every now and then.
posted by Mandi on 9-26-2007 at 10:14 am
I am partial to Garamond, myself. Just different enough without being Comic Sans. Which I abhor.
posted by Aridane on 9-26-2007 at 10:15 am
Hating on Comic Sans here too, as well as Monotype Corsiva. I’m a Tahoma gal mainly, although Verdana is a close second. My all time favorite is Cooper Black. Holla!
posted by Jill on 9-26-2007 at 10:27 am
I use Georgia. It was pretty much all I used in college. I can’t look at Times. It makes me gag. I like the straight letter fonts, but there’s something classier about using Georgia, makes the writing seem more important even when it’s on oprah.
posted by Ace on 9-26-2007 at 10:33 am
I’ve actually grown fond of Calibri recently, through using Office 2007 (particularly OneNote) excessively. It just seems a lot smoother, or rounded, than a lot of others.
posted by Samantha on 9-26-2007 at 10:36 am
Yeah – Gil Sans Ultra Bold 24 point or larger.
No mention of the movie “Helvetica.”
Anybody seen it?
posted by GoingLikeSixty on 9-26-2007 at 10:36 am
Never really got the hang of knowing one font from another. But I love using the Brady Bunch font (yes, there really is one) whenever I can. :-)
posted by Sheldon Siegel on 9-26-2007 at 10:40 am
I love Garamond with Franklin Gothic it’s a great combo and always looks fresh and clean. I’m in advertising, so any flyer on a college campus is sure to boast at least 6 fonts (quivering at the thought). Can someone tell these wanna be designers that scripts in all caps don’t look cool? Also, I’m in agreement with hating on Comic Sans.
p.s Palatino is available on PCs =)
posted by Ang on 9-26-2007 at 10:41 am
Always been a fan of Franklin Gothic & Copperplate. And I agree, Comic Sans simply isn’t cute.
posted by Anita on 9-26-2007 at 10:52 am
I use Book Antiqua for everything at my store. I use arial at home.
posted by Melissa on 9-26-2007 at 10:58 am
Am I the only person who loves, loves, LOVES Arial? I use it on everything: websites, papers, e-mail, birthday cakes…Times New Roman’s far too bookish for me. My favorite “fanciful” font remains Black Chancery, even if it’s a bit dated now.
I agree with all of those who can’t think of Comic Sans as a font for real people. If I must have a serif font, maybe Bodoni…
posted by Kechiro on 9-26-2007 at 10:58 am
i’m a huge fan of century gothic and also lucida handwriting (not so much the regular one, though).
posted by samantha_d on 9-26-2007 at 11:04 am
I cannot stand Times New Roman. I like Courier and Arial is OK. I’ve been partial to Garamond lately but use Century Gothic when I’m feeling whimsical. (Just kidding about the whimsical part…I don’t think I’ve ever felt whimsical…but I do like the Century Gothic sometimes). I know Garamond looks a lot like Times but to me, it’s different enough so that I don’t hear chalkboard scratching noises in my head.
posted by Nina on 9-26-2007 at 11:17 am
Higgins, I am with you on Courier, Comic Sans, and Impact. But how can you hate Skia?! I love it – not for email or letters or anything long, but for flyers or signs it’s wonderfully crisp.
GoingLikeSixty, I heard about that movie awhile ago and wanted to see it, but it hasn’t been in my area. Is it good?
posted by Molly on 9-26-2007 at 11:32 am
Gotta say I’m a big WIDE LATIN fan. Big! Bold! Manly! Then there’s the Copperplate triptych which is nice – and if ya bold on of those, you get 6 fonts for the price of three, so ya got that goin’ for you.
And I used some Art Deco fonts for my wedding invitations – but all the numbers wound up looking alike, so no one had any idea what time or day it was. In fact, now that I think of it, a lot of you must have misread my address as well, because there are quite a few wedding presents outstanding….
posted by michael Stusser on 9-26-2007 at 11:34 am
love arial!
posted by j forth on 9-26-2007 at 11:54 am
I’m Book Antiqua pretty much all the way. I love Copperplate (it has that nostalgic look to it) but it’s not really practical outside of letterhead.
Now, a note to all the Courier-haters: aesthetics aside, let’s not lose sight of the font’s ability to take an eight-page Times New Roman term paper and turn it into a ten-pager. I distinctly remember this font letting me get to bed early on multiple occasions in college.
posted by Roger on 9-26-2007 at 11:55 am
I use Verdana for the web, arial for print communications.
Several years ago, a chiropractor in our area had a business sign made in full Gothic caps…the German style. Nicely unreadable.
posted by Bob Lawrence on 9-26-2007 at 12:01 pm
I like Clearview. Y’know, the one on the US highway signs.
posted by fixedgear on 9-26-2007 at 12:30 pm
Lucida Sans Unicode is my favorite
posted by lastpub on 9-26-2007 at 12:36 pm
Count me as a Comic Sans hater. There’s a local boat dealer that uses it for their main sign. I have to pass it nearly every day and it makes me cringe every time.
For anything I actually care about someone seeing, I’ve always liked Arial simply because it’s nice and clean. Century Gothic would run a close second place. But when I’m writing a story or an email and I don’t think the reader is going to know/care, I generally just go with good ol’ default Times New Roman.
posted by SpaceMonkeyX on 9-26-2007 at 12:41 pm
verdana is the one i use most the time, all my aol stuff is set to use it and when i type letters and other things i use that font as well.
posted by heather on 9-26-2007 at 12:45 pm
OH I agree – I HATE Comic Sans & Courier
I like the Lucida family, as well as Footlight MT Light. I used to prefer Arial over Times New Roman, until college, when I learned (in Editing & Print Design) that serif fonts are better for text, whereas sans fonts are better for titles. Seemed counter-intuitive to me, but, after 4 years & countless papers, I’ve converted to serifs (I still like a lot of sans, though)
Wow, I didn’t realize I had so much to say about fonts!
posted by sd on 9-26-2007 at 1:26 pm
I love Georgia, but hardly get the chance to use anything else besides Times New Roman, as most teachers require it. I also love any font that looks like cursive handwriting. Edwardian Script (even though you have to make the font bigger just to read it), French Script, et cetera et cetera.
posted by Kitty on 9-26-2007 at 1:57 pm
Molly – I guess you have a point about Skia. I just have a bad association because it was used on a “temporary company logo” for a place I worked at in the 90’s, and temporary became permanent, and it looked reeeeeally silly. (The “logo” was just the company’s name in Skia with a hand-drawn line underneath it. For real.)
posted by Higgins on 9-26-2007 at 2:13 pm
Oh, and for those who hate Comic Sans, check out bancomicsans.com. There are actually GOOD comic book/handwriting fonts out there, it’s just that Comic Sans isn’t one of them. :)
posted by Higgins on 9-26-2007 at 2:20 pm
Futurama Alien Alphabet font is the single best font ever! trippy as hell.
posted by ryan on 9-26-2007 at 2:33 pm
My goodness who knew so many people can actually hate a font of all things
I kinda like comic sans
posted by Lindsey on 9-26-2007 at 3:23 pm
I use either Verdana size 10 or Palatino Linotype size 12.
I second Roger: Courier is excellent for spacing out a paper. Not the nicest font, but when you’re half a page short and can’t think of anything else to say… it’s amazing.
posted by sporkk on 9-26-2007 at 3:52 pm
I have to say, from a design standpoint, Comic Sans really is the single worst font ever. And it isn’t even used in comics much.
I really like Rockwell and Palatino. Sophisticated, legible, but not quite as common as Times.
*sigh* you know you’re a design student when…
posted by Lea on 9-26-2007 at 5:13 pm
Ah, fonts! I wish I could speak with authority on the subject, but I am just a fan, not a font designer. However, I do have my strong preferences.
I happen to enjoy: Rockwell, Tahoma, Georgia, Bookman Old Style, Century Gothic, Helvetica, and Arial.
I dislike: Times New Roman, Cooperplate Gothic, Comic Sans, Calonna, Curlz, Desdemona, Harrington, Impact, Lucinda Hand, Mistral, Papyrus… oh my goodness this list is long.
I clearly favor the simple, strong fonts that don’t limit themselves to a certain personality or use.
posted by Julia on 9-26-2007 at 5:51 pm
Yay for typefaces!
I have to say that I like most serifed fonts, save for Times New Roman, which is a boring font. I like one called “Bell MT,” and is similar to Hoefler.
A sans-serifed font can be nice, but there are too many like Arial, which is also boring and plain. Veranda is a good clean sans-serif font.
posted by Steve on 9-26-2007 at 6:16 pm
I am so thrilled that there’s so much Georgia love. I thought I was the only one. Other serif fonts I like are Garamond and Palatino. I also really like Calibri on the new Office, and have always enjoyed Helvetica and Century as sans serif fonts.
Not a Courier fan, but it does have its uses.
I’m sure anyone who has done any amount of layout work pretty well loathes comic sans, papyrus, and script caps.
posted by smirks on 9-26-2007 at 6:28 pm
I like Palatino, mainly because some of its italic characters are really beautiful. After seeing the “Helvetica” documentary, I have a new appreciation for Helvetica.
posted by Average Jane on 9-26-2007 at 6:49 pm
Hooray for type!
Didot is probably my favorite font. It’s pretty to look at up close.
I also like Franklin Gothic, Helvetica Neue and Gill Sans. They put me through college.
I cringe when I see script fonts or Papyrus. They remind me of those birthday cards from MS Word with the pixelated clip art balloons. And though I like novelty fonts, I wish people would stop using Rosewood in every single advertisement and/or packaging design.
posted by Lauren on 9-26-2007 at 8:14 pm
I’ve always been a big fan of Arial Narrow… I see I’m the only one? Also, I think it’s called Andy, that one’s fun too but not for anything people need to read for any amount of time.
I, too, hate the Comic Sans… also dislike Lucida Handwriting ’cause I can’t frickin’ read it!
posted by Suzanne on 9-27-2007 at 12:14 am
Albertus and Tahoma are my two current favorites. Although, I’ve been toying wtih having my handwriting rendered into a personal font. Luckily for me, I have great handwriting.
posted by Lalita on 9-27-2007 at 1:43 pm
I’ve been totally loving Japanese Gothic lately. I’m also going to have to hate on Arial Black especially when people feel the need to make it bold. It just feels redundant.
Tahoma, Verdana, and Georgia are my favs for the bi-weekly newsletter I compile at work.
posted by Farfalla on 9-27-2007 at 2:41 pm
I like a lot of types of fonts, but the one that my whole computer is set to is Book Antiqua.
posted by Emily on 10-16-2007 at 7:39 pm
I like American Typewriter, Tahoma is good, and the only Arial I will use is the BOLD version. I like to change them up. I love having so many choices!
posted by mishele on 11-7-2007 at 8:14 pm
bodoni(many types, i like the straight faces for text, and the really bold italics for cool headlines
mrs. eaves
big caslon
akzidenz grotesk
helvetica neue
trajan
bickham script
god will smite you if you use papyrus.
posted by caspian the tenth on 1-24-2008 at 9:43 pm
I like Arial, in 12.
posted by Sara on 3-1-2009 at 12:15 pm