The Obligatory Blog

Say hello to my favourite fonts

Fonts are, unfortunately, an expensive habit. There are hundreds of good free fonts out there but (reasonably so), you usually have to pay for great fonts. A single font version might be just £10 - £20, but to be really versatile you probably want a few weights, almost certainly an italic version, a nice chunky one for headlines and another that's suitable for body text.

It can be hard to convince clients of the importance of font choice when designing a website (I'm talking specifically about web design, because it's what I do, I'm sure the same is true of other design areas too). Firstly, it can be difficult to explain why the free fonts that have come with Microsoft Office are not necessarily the best choice to brand your company with. It can then be even more challenging explaining the benefits of spending £50+ on a set of fonts.

My solution has tended to be to try and avoid the whole discussion. Where possible/appropriate/necessary I'll include the cost of a font family into the overall project cost, but not directly specify it as a font cost - it's just part and parcel of the design process, quite often I will simply use favourite fonts that I already own and sometimes (and actually with greater regularity for reasons I will explain shortly) I'll use free fonts and accept the limitations that can come with these.

While it's great to scout out a new font to work with on a new design, I still find myself returning to a few favourites.

1. Chalet, from House Industries. Chalet has become an indispensable workhorse for me. Simple, elegant, clean and very versatile. Some fonts get tired quickly and your designs can look a bit repetitive if you reuse them too often. Chalet doesn't seem to suffer this at all, a timeless font that keeps coming back for more.
2. Candy Script, from Veer. Candy Script is a great fun font. I bought it to use on the logo for Mekonta and ended up using it on a logo for Bilby Bites because I was designing it at the time and couldn't wait to try it out. Unlike Chalet, it's not quite as versatile or discreet so not one to use on too many projects as it is very distinctive.
3. Clarendon, available from many font vendors. Another slab serif - I'm a big fan of a good slab serif! Clarendon is an odd one for me, I love it (hence being on this list) but I actually find myself using it rarely. It has a certain degree more 'elegance' than many other slab serifs, but not always so good at smaller sizes. Clarendon is very much on my radar right now and I'm itching to get it rolled into a new project as soon as something appropriate comes along.
4. Georgia. Widely available and installed as standard on most Windows and Mac systems. Almost without a moment's debate I'll use Georgia when requiring a serif font on a website. Works really well at any size and has a certain 'softer' feel to it than alternatives like Garmond or Times. Increasingly, a quality serif (and very often Georgia because it's so widely available) is used to give a contemporary look. I think this is a reaction against the proliferation of plain Arial, Verdana and Lucida Sans fonts used across almost every website going - but the the effect of switching between a sans and serif font on your designs shouldn't be underestimated.
5. Cooper Black. Included with Mac OSX, and available from many font sites. It's funny, 18 months ago I would never had listed this font here, I think I thought it looked a bit dated and maybe even ugly. Cooper Black was created in the 20's, but for me it has a touch of the 70's about it. I've used it a few times recently and think it's quite fun - it was (is) the perfect font choice for the Wit & Wisdom of Matt Beckenham - I only went for a different choice because I couldn't rely on it being installed on most Windows users systems. It's still a fallback option, but I've had to go with a second choice font as the primary display via Typekit.
6. Chunk, from The League of Movable Type. I love Chunk and have used it to death over the past few months. It's proven to be a really versatile slab serif. Surprisingly legible at even small sizes and to top it all it's free. The licensing for Chunk means it can be used on a website via the @font-face attribute, which means users will see the font even if not installed on their system. Feel free to step in and correct me here, but I don't think the licensing on any other font here can be used in this way.

Another blog post from John Cowen - a web designer in Exeter working under the name Mekonta. If you liked this article, subscribe.