No matter how nicely you format your report or presentation or portfolio, someone’s bound to ask,
Is that Calibri?
or perhaps,
Did you use Arial?
and otherwise,
You used Times New Roman right? What font size?
Most of our understanding of what constitutes a beautiful or user-friendly font theme or style comes from Microsoft Word’s default formatting or our friends, the majority of whom invariably uses Microsoft’s default formatting.
It’s time that we changed some of that. The ugliness of and the ignorance surrounding the use of this “mainstream” variety fonts is unacceptable. We can overcome this through a proper cultivation of taste, beginning with a brief introduction of what makes a font practical and polished simultaneously.
The following are 3 categories of fonts which are readily used by a generic audience, and comprises at least 5 of my favourite fonts. Each of them have wonderful flavour, and each glyph (character) carries with it character and accomplishment. A word of caution: use them appropriately, use them well. Don’t ever abuse a font.
(For easy reference and high-quality zoom, use the pdf instead.)
*Simple Sophistication fonts are fully interchangeable.
11 Comments
oh, lol! I use helvetica every time some teacher demands everything to be typed in arial. I’m rebellious like that
Arial is nonsense. What is even more painful is attempting a KI paper typed in comic sans. I wanted to perform harakiri there and then.
Comic Sans is the most overused font ever. Back when I was 11, everyone used Comic Sans in electric blue for MSN. Garrrh.
I think I saw an album cover with Comic Sans before. Ughadgahsgdsa.
OMG Samuel we share the same brain-waves. I never, ever use Arial. Your life is precious. Try typing it out in a decent font, then before you print, quickly change the font and Ctrl P immediately. That way you won’t die.
Ling: YES. haha i remember those days. You saw an album with comic sans. shocking.
so where do you even get the fonts u mentioned?
Mac Office comes with the loveliest fonts, I’m not even done using them all and wow font enthusiasts are hard to come by
Most of them are on Adobe Font Folio 11 and some come in a mac.
The former has 2300 fonts and cost USD 2600.
Alternatively, you could ask me.
Why bother when you can use good ol’ Courier New, which has served us for so long?
<3 Courier New!
yay for typography!!!!
boo to calibri, which everyone in my PW group uses except for me! T_T
hahaha righttt chester.
michelle, that’s because you are uniquely endowed with taste. most people don’t even know what that is.
I use Cambria for serif and Calibri for sans-serif – thought there are indeed better fonts that can be used.
And here we go again. I sat down and was happily writing out my KI essay outline in full. Midway through I got slightly bored, and ridiculously tired of Palatino Linotype, Garamond and the usual standard fonts.
(My thoughts die a miserable death when I type in Times New Roman. Let’s not even talk about Arial.)
The memory of this post wedged itself into the boredom.
I can only conclude it must be at least partly your fault that I then found myself searching and downloading – let’s not go into numbers – too many gorgeous serif fonts.
dafont.com is quite wonderful, but very distracting. (Yes, cheapo. And also means that I don’t need to sweet-talk my parents into shelling out anything. Or to earn the money myself, for that matter.)(Still, since you mention that, the ones above are quite attractive… *puppy eyes*)
http://www.dafont.com/manfred-klein.d302 This bloke’s fonts are killing, I must say. Enjoy.
(Arno Pro is quite lovely in size 11, but I don’t have it in TrueType, so I can’t actually embed it and send it to the teachers via email. Which I wouldn’t done sooner, having completed said essay sooner, except for this.
Your fault.
Thank you. I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time.)