{"id":71839,"date":"2024-11-28T14:13:30","date_gmt":"2024-11-28T19:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/?p=71839"},"modified":"2024-11-28T14:14:04","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T19:14:04","slug":"the-real-top-ten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2024\/11\/28\/the-real-top-ten\/","title":{"rendered":"The *Real* Top Ten"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of my last little projects before I left Adobe back in early 2021 was putting together a small feature (with an accompanying font pack<\/a>) about my personal top ten list of fonts. This wasn\u2019t a list of favorite fonts: it was a list of starting points for choosing the right styles for a given project. Basically, working out a good starter list for yourself is like the start of a choose-your-own-adventure process for type selection, so you can start with a few families that you know well, and begin mixing and looking for alternative choices based on what will really<\/em> work for the task at hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing is, my choices for that feature were limited to options available in Adobe Fonts<\/a>, so I had to skip a few of my real go-to\u2019s for similar options available in the library. (Having a handle top-ten list makes it easier to start swapping in appropriate alternatives, of course.) It\u2019s only natural to revisit the idea and share my real Personal Top Ten*:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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1. Dolly designed by Underware<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dolly is a warm, fairly classic book typeface, but it\u2019s not too stuffy and has a bit of personality. Classic book typography has been around for hundreds of years for a lot of reasons. It\u2019s a whole genre that\u2019s developed certain principles that work. What I like about Dolly is that it\u2019s not overused; it hasn\u2019t been seen all over the place, so it has a slightly fresher feel to it. And when you zoom into the details, it\u2019s just really well put together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2. Ingeborg designed by the Type Jockeys<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ingeborg is always where I seat when I\u2019m looking for a sturdy and upright text face that has a dash of personality. This the other direction I might go when choosing a book typeface: a little bit crisper than Dolly, and calls a little more attention to itself without going overboard. (I chose Source Serif<\/a> for the Adobe list, which is a great alternative \u2014 particularly if you need a wider range of style tint he family.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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3. PMN Caecilia from Monotype<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Matthias Noordzij\u2019s Caecilia is a readable slab serif typeface, meaning that the weights of the different details are similar. It sits somewhere between a classic book typeface and sans serif that you might use for headlines and captions or other short passages of typography. Caecilia is very sensitively drawn \u2014 it\u2019s built around principles of readability, but has the coolness of a sans serif.  (I always have trouble finding another slab that does quite what Caecilia can do, so my Buckram<\/a> family is my attempt to pin down a different flavor within a similar space.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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4. Cooper Black designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The OG. As far as big-impact display typefaces go, Cooper Black is my go-to. It\u2019s not good at all for body text; it\u2019s only good for things that are big and attention-grabbing. It\u2019s got a very distinct personality that I find useful for lots of situations, because it\u2019s older and has been popular in many different phases throughout graphic history since the early 20th century. A lot of people recognize it, and it\u2019s got a proven track record for being warm, friendly, and approachable. (Many have tried to do a \u201ccleaner\u201d alternative to Cooper, but it\u2019s so perfectly eccentric that it falls apart if you meddle too much. Miles Newlyn has come closest, with his multi-weight New Kansas<\/a> family.)

It\u2019s the kind of typeface I\u2019ll drop into a layout if I need something really solid and big. Then, slowly, I can consider other similar choices, and ask myself, \u201cDo I want something that feels this nostalgic, or do I want to go with something newer, something softer, or a bit crisper?\u201d It\u2019s a dependable placeholder that can help you further refine in either direction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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5. Shatter from ITC<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vic Carless won Letraset<\/a>\u2019s 1973 competition with Shatter, and with good reason. It\u2019s a totally wild and out-there display typeface that\u2019s great for when you want to set something that\u2019s very big, and very visual. This typeface is clearly not prioritizing readability: It\u2019s all about impact and personality.

A big factor in my love of the dry transfer type<\/a> is the explosion of punchy display faces like this. I have a particular fondness for Shatter, but when I\u2019m playing with a layout, I will often stray toward other exuberant options like Flash ND<\/a>, Calypso<\/a>, or Stilla<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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6. HEX Franklin designed by HEX Projects<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sans serifs get used for so many different kinds of typographic work that I like to have a few different styles handy \u2014 and I\u2019m constantly trying to push against the stuff that\u2019s overused. I don\u2019t like using Helvetica, or typefaces that look too much like it. They\u2019re valid, but pretty played out. Personally, I\u2019m always looking for sans serifs that have a bit more personality.

I truly love Franklin Gothic<\/a> \u2014 in concept. Crisp but not too stiff, Franklin Gothic allows me to ask questions like, \u201cDo I need something that feels angular or more constructed, or do I want to go towards something that feels a bit warmer?\u201d In practice, though the trouble is that there have been many versions of Franklin Gothic produced over the decades, each drifting in slightly different directions. Nick Sherman\u2019s HEX Franklin pulls together the essential qualities that I like the best, including its Tyght version that lets you pack the letters together like carefully set prototype or transfer type. (Like Nick, Kris Sowersby of Klim researched the many flavors of Franklin that have propagated, and distilled those ideas into his own excellent version \u2014 American Grotesk<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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7. ATF Alternate Gothic from American Type Founders Collection<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I use Alternate Gothic when I want to explore some of those same qualities as Franklin Gothic, but know that space is at a premium. Alternate Gothic is a basic family with three different weights, but they\u2019re all condensed. The different styles go from very, very narrow to slightly wider, but they all have that same somewhat old-fashioned yet crisp feeling of Franklin Gothic. There are also a few different digitizations of the Alternate Gothic family \u2014 one of them is called ATF Alternate Gothic, where each one of those three basic weights actually gets expanded into a family of slightly different weights. (When I want a similar vibe but with a little more squareness to it, I reach for Letraset Compacta<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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8. Maple designed by Process Type Foundry<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a sans serif, Maple has a lot of personality. It\u2019s modeled on some traditional forms, but it plays up the eccentricity in the details of some of these older models of sans serifs. It\u2019s not too distracting, but it\u2019s not invisible. Whereas Franklin Gothic can recede into the background, Maple is great for when you want to start drawing a little bit more attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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9. Frankfurter from ITC<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another note that I often want to try to hit with sans serif typography \u2014 and this is when I\u2019ll go through a lot of typefaces, often when I\u2019m trying to choose just the right thing \u2014 is a friendly, soft, rounded sans serif. Frankfurter, another Letraset classic, is just about always the perfect choice. The only drawback to Frankfurter is that it\u2019s only got caps, and doesn\u2019t come with a range of weights. (It has a fantastic Highlight style, but the less said about Frankfurter Medium the better.) If you need that kind of softness for a range of uses, from things that are quieter and better for text, try Gotham Rounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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10. Ringold Clarendon designed by Bijou Type<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the great joys of being a type designer is that if you can\u2019t find quite the right typeface, you can just make it yourself. That\u2019s how Ringold Clarendon came about (as well as the rest of the family that spawned out of that). I kept wanting to reach for Egyptienne<\/a> (or one of its many incarnations), which has a certain tone that I love, but then the spacing bugs me, and too many of the letters feel clogged up, and the numbers and punctuation are horrible (for my purposes). So, I rebuilt the whole idea up from scratch: drawn and spaced to get the dense color and tight spacing that I want, with figures and symbols than have enough oomph to go with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Again, these are not my top ten favorites, but my top ten choices of typefaces that I know and understand really well, so I can quickly determine if they are the right fit for a project, or if I need to start tweaking my choices to suit the specific needs.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my last little projects before I left Adobe back in early 2021 was putting together a small feature (with an accompanying font pack) about my personal top ten list of fonts. This wasn\u2019t a list of favorite fonts: it was a list of starting points for choosing the right styles for a given … Continue reading “The *Real* Top Ten”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultratypographic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71839"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71851,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71839\/revisions\/71851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}