Typeface/Font thread

[danjuno]

Splitting this off from the Trump thread to save BJ the trouble: What Typeface/Font do you like?

Butting in: yes, I don’t like Calibri. I’m not a fan of Times New Roman either. There are better typefaces that are both better looking and include the requisite readability.

TBH I actually do like Times New Roman, maybe it's just a familiarity thing since it used to be the default font for MS Word back in the 2000's.

That said, watching the Homestar Runner webtoons as a kid I also ended up with an interest in Bauhaus 93.

 

[GenMarshall]

Don’t know how anyone can hate Times New Roman. Though the hate for Comic Sans, I can understand (even if it’s a meme at this point).

 

[amadeus]

It depends on what I’m doing. I have hundreds of freeware fonts installed, but for a document I’d just go with something simple like Arial.

Ａｌｔｈｏｕｇｈ　ｉｆ　ｐｒｅｓｓｅｄ　Ｉ　ｃａｎ　ｓｗｉｔｃｈ　ｔｏ　ｆｕｌｌーｗｉｄｔｈ　ｍｏｎｏｓｐａｃｅｄ　ｃｈａｒａｃｔｅｒｓ　ｂｙ　ｕｓｉｎｇ　ｍｙ　Ｊａｐａｎｅｓｅ　ｋｅｙｂｏａｒｄ．

 

[Birdjaguar]

I like serif fonts; Calibri, though, is a nice font and I use it when using Word. For verses sent to friends and family I like Ink Free and Bradley Hand ITC.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

I like a lot of the early Apple fonts; Chicago, Charcoal, Geneva, Shaston. They have character and boldness without being overly complex. Old ASCII fonts/characters/variants are really charming, I am kind of partial to chunky Atari ones. Lucida Grande is really nice and elegant and classy. Topaz and its super curved apostrophes are fun. Helvetica is a good neutral.

Basically all the ones I mentioned are sans-serif, which is objectively the best kind of typeface. I don’t hate TNR, but it’s not good.

 

[Angst]

oh, this is a big one. my roster of fonts varies a lot depending on use (is it a birthday invitation, is it a dense chapter of prose, does the text need negative space surrounding it in a poem, is it useful playing around with something that looks digital emulating a typewriter, is it monospace for form poetry or chord notation, and then assorted needs when i do my dnd docs, eg handwritey or just having a slight fantastic flair). also made a few fonts myself, literally, to use digitally. they were all bad lol. but they're fun to do.

i don't like much doing overtly stylized fonts. i like them being reasonably close to what you'd expect from ordinary serif/sans serif, but with slight changes that matches its purpose.

font matters a lot as to the purpose of a text, and for artistic endeavours (most of my work), it's work that i feel not enough writers think about when doing their manuscripts. it goes hand in hand with formatting, which they do think more about, but also not enough. it's not even about presentation in itself, it's about the engagement; small-spaced, dense serifs do well for dense texts that require a lot of digging and careful reading.

i think my favorite text for general purposes is granjon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granjon , a garamond variant, which usually looks horrible in word documents but tends to print really well. tiny imperfections that happen during printing can really help a text feel chewy and crisp, for the lack of a better term.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I have found that if you learned to read using serif typefaces, you might well prefer those in adulthood. The same seems to apply with sans serif. Sans serif have gone far more mainstream since computers started needing printers. Sans serif often look more "modern" even though they have been around since the early 1800s.

 

[Angst]

I have found that if you learned to read using serif typefaces, you might well prefer those in adulthood. The same seems to apply with sans serif. Sans serif have gone far more mainstream since computers started needing printers. Sans serif often look more "modern" even though they have been around since the early 1800s.

my origin with granjon is very specific and is definitely connected to childhood. i am usually explicit when telling people why i use it so much; i got Enten-Eller by Søren Kierkegaard as a present when i was 15, and the version in question was a visual reprint of one of the older versions, and it used granjon. that is literally the reason i use it so much.

it is a very rich font though. readable and makes the text look like a mid to early 1900s print. doesn't look particularly classic, just carries signifiers of being an older work, which meshes well when you write stuff where you expect the reader to spend time in each sentence and usually investigate things a few times over (certain fonts in prose convey to the reader that they're not inherently supposed to grasp it at a quick pass, if it's similar-looking to books using archaic language, where you usually slow down and don't expect to grasp the full extent of the nomenclature and the world). all while being a reasonably light garamond-esque font.

 

[EnglishEdward]

I have standardised on Arial 12 for my to Do list.

 

[Akka]

Palatino Linotype
It's clear and easy to read but still somewhat ornamental.
As a fallback, Garamond is nice.

Don’t know how anyone can hate Times New Roman.

I'm not a fan of this font.
It's looks a bit messy and it always give me the nagging feeling that the letters are very slightly not on the same level. It's probably just a perception trick (or my astigmatism), but it makes it annoying to read for me.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I like to use Baskerville for my ebooks

 

[Lexicus]

Papyrus supremacy

 

[Angst]

NYEH

 

[Birdjaguar]

Palatino Linotype

When you add swash caps, Palatino shines.

 

[amadeus]

Though the hate for Comic Sans, I can understand (even if it’s a meme at this point).

Papyrus supremacy

The thing is with these is that they’re both alright when used (I believe sparingly) in the contexts of their designs—the instructions at a coin laundromat are not the place, nor is an office reminder for people to make fresh coffee. It’s not fonts that are bad, it’s people—they’re horrible.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The thing is with these is that they’re both alright when used (I believe sparingly) in the contexts of their designs—the instructions at a coin laundromat are not the place, nor is an office reminder for people to make fresh coffee. It’s not fonts that are bad, it’s people—they’re horrible.

But if we blame our problems on things like fonts, we can pretend it's not us that are the problem....

 

[thetrooper]

You guys are really something else

Thread about fonts…

 

[Lexicus]

You guys are really something else

Thread about fonts…

 

[warpus]

As long as it's readable and not distracting in any way, I don't really care what the typeface is, if we're being honest.

IMO if you're not even thinking about the typeface, i.e. when it's not distracting at all, when you are 100% focused on the content of what's written, then it's a good choice of typeface.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

"i don't believe you"
"it's apparently true though"
"no"
"you can find documentation f everywhere"
"source?"
*sighs* fine *clicks twice* "here's two sources, one informal from an organization that deals with this stuff and one academic"
"no"

This is gross misrepresentation of what transpired. I wondered from where the previous State Department drew its conclusion. And you told me to just google it. This is just being lazy on your part, irrespective of me not knowing the answer enough to wanting to discuss it openly. One of your links even points to more-experimental typefaces besides Calibri, with different weights to certain strokes of each letter and such. Which means there are other considerations to reading besides typeface. An actual claim which I did not ever dispute.

it's very clear you delight in the discrepancy, that some people have it tougher. that a signifier of font demonstrates an older time you like while forcing a bunch of the population to work around it. good, very conservative of you.

And what would you call a stance which says everyone else who found zero issue with the older typeface will just have to adapt to the new change because...?
I am not opposed to reasonable accommodations for those who ask for it, and that offering a reading tool for someone who wants one should be made available. Whether that just means asking the Dept. to convert a specific document to Calibri when sending it, and so on. Rather I'm opposed to assuming that what's presumably good for the disabled ought to be (apparently) par for the course for everyone else too.

i believe you can read this text, right now, reasonably easily. so you are abjectly whining about something that you, a grown adult, should have absolutely no problem doing.

I can tolerate it, for a while; I certainly would not want to read an entire essay in this typeface. I know various teachers of mine did not.
Though I doubt the State Department was contending with message board posts, but probably things much more formal. And so your point here that I shouldn't really have any problem with sans serif because I happen to be typing it now is merely being framed as a distraction. My question isn't which typeface can you personally stand; it's: what's the validity for the change...

The thing that is deliberate is the cruelty – consideration, care, politeness all these things are weak and despicable – only cruelty is honest.

Neither you nor me having to read a different typeface is cruelty. There is no reason to be that dramatic. What, did someone die or something here?
If Marco Rubio said he had some religious epiphany regarding his favoring Times New Roman, I wouldn't've cared either; it's a stylistic return to a normal I think is good. If you think that particular typeface sucks, fine, whatever.

That's a strange hill do go die on, seriously. I mean, fonts ?

What do you care that I care? Did I push back one of your posts or something? I have thousands of more to go to catch up to you before you and I can start measuring what's really considered important...