25 Best Known Classic Typefaces

Posted on: August 7, 2009 | Category: typography | 40 Comments

Eric Gill, Adrian Frutiger, Erik Spiekermann and Max Miedinger are names we associate with the classic typefaces designers use on a daily basis. Their font creations are timeless designs that look right at home no matter what century we’re in.

This collection of 25 classic typefaces is a round up of the best and most popular fonts every designer should own. You can be sure that they will last your whole design career.

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/.01/ Helvetica

Helvetica is one of the most popular typefaces of all time. It was designed by Max Miedinger in 1957 for the Haas foundry of Switzerland (the name is derived from Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland).

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/.02/ Bodoni

Giambattista Bodoni of Parma, Italy, designed and cut his typefaces at the end of the eighteenth century. The Bodoni types were the culmination of nearly 300 years of evolution in roman type design, in which fine hairlines contrast sharply with bolder stems, and serifs are often unbracketed.
Bodoni is recognized by its high contrast between thick and thin strokes, pure vertical stress, and hairline serifs. This particular version of Bodoni was first created by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders between 1908 and 1915. It brings elegance and sparkle to any graphic image, including headlines, text, and logos.

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/.03/ Clarendon

A square-serif type is called a slab serif or Egyptian, but when the serif is bracketed (the curved linking stroke between the stem and the square serif), the type is sometimes referred to as a Clarendon.
Originated in England by the Fann St. Foundry in 1845, these types are named for the Clarendon Press in Oxford. Clarendon was originally designed as a heavier complement to ordinary serif designs, and is used frequently in dictionaries and headline applications.

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/.04/ Akzidenz Grotesk

Akzidenz Grotesk was designed in 1896 by the H. Berthold AG type foundry and was used as inspiration in 1957 for the Helvetica typeface.

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/.05/ Avenir

Avenir was designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by Linotype-Hell AG in 1988. The design is based on two earlier sans serif typefaces, Erbar and Futura.

Avenir is unusual in that it has weights that are similar, but each is designed for a different purpose.

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/.06/ DIN-schriften

The letters DIN refer to the Deutsche Industrie-Norm, the German Industrial Standard; among their many uses, these typefaces are seen on most road signs and license plates in what was formerly West Germany.

One of the primary criteria for the DIN Schriften design was a facility for reproduction. There are four geometric sans serif typefaces, of roughly the same weight but of various widths, from quite round to condensed.

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/.07/ Futura

Designed by Paul Renner in 1927, Futura is the classic example of a geometric sans serif type. Its original concept was based on the Bauhaus design philosophy that ‘form follows function.’

Futura uses basic geometric proportions with no weight stresses, serifs, or frills, with long ascenders and descenders that give it more elegance than most sans serif typefaces.

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/.08/ News Gothic

In 1908, Morris Fuller Benton designed News Gothic for American Type Founders. The original design, with two condensed faces, is essentially a light version of Franklin Gothic.

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/.09/ Frutiger

In 1968, Adrian Frutiger was commissioned to develop a signage system suited to the architecture of the new Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris; he designed a simple, clean, robust sans serif type that is highly legible. In 1976, Frutiger completed the family for the Stempel foundry.

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/.10/ Meta

FF Meta is another member of the modern classic collection, designed by Erik Spiekermann in 1986. Meta is one of my personal favourites, athough you can see this type almost everywhere in the Netherlands.

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/.11/ Gill Sans

Designed by Eric Gill and released by the Monotype Corporation between 1928 and 1930, Gill Sans is based on the typeface Edward Johnston, the innovative British letterer and teacher, designed in 1916 for the signage of the London Underground.

Gill’s alphabet is more classical in proportion and contains his signature flared capital R and eyeglass lowercase g.

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/.12/ Garamond

An Adobe Originals design, and Adobe’s first historical revival, Adobe Garamond is a digital interpretation of the roman types of Claude Garamond and the italic types of Robert Granjon.

Since its release in 1989, Adobe Garamond has become a typographic staple throughout the world of desktop typography and design.

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/.13/ Lucida Sans

Lucida Sans is the sans serif complement to Lucida, designed by Kris Holmes and Charles Bigelow in 1985.

The strong shapes and generous proportions are based on traditional Roman letterforms, making them clear and easy to read in the fine print of directories and parts lists, as well as clean and powerful in business correspondence and newsletters.

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/.14/ Dax

Dax, now famously used for the branding of UPS, was originally created by Hans Reichel in the period 1995-1997.

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/.15/ Myriad

An Adobe Originals design first released in 1992, Myriad has become popular for both text and display composition.

As an OpenType release, Myriad Pro expands this sans serif family to include Greek and Cyrillic glyphs, as well as adding oldstyle figures and improving support for Latin-based languages. The full Myriad Pro family includes condensed, normal, and extended widths in a full range of weights.

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/.16/ VAG Rounded

Developed for Volkswagen AG in 1979, VAG Rounded is a variation on nineteenth-century grotesque sans serif designs.

What is unusual about VAG Rounded is that the terminal of every stroke is rounded. VAG Rounded, aka VAG Rundschrift makes an appearance in countless web2.0 logos.

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/.17/ Optima

Optima is elegant and highly readable, qualities remarkable in a sans serif design.

Created in 1958 by Hermann Zapf for the Stempel foundry, Optima combines features of both serif and sans serif types into one humanistic design. The tapered strokes are reminiscent of the calligraphic pen, and the character shapes are soothing to the eye.

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/.18/ Avant Garde Gothic

Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase based their 1970 design of ITC Avant Garde Gothic on Lubalin’s logo for Avant Garde Magazine. The condensed fonts were designed for the International Typeface Corporation in 1974 by Ed Benguiat.

ITC Avant Garde Gothic is a geometric sans serif type, that is, the basic shapes were made with a compass and T-square; the design is reminiscent of the work from the 1920s German Bauhaus movement.

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/.19/ Univers

As a student in Zurich, Adrian Frutiger began work on Univers, which would eventually be released in 1957 by the Deberny & Peignot foundry in Paris. The design is a neo-grotesque, similar to its contemporary, Helvetica.

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/.20/ Rockwell

The original Rockwell was produced by the Inland typefoundry in 1910, which issued it as Litho Antique; American Type Founders revived the face in the 1920s, with Morris Fuller Benton cutting several new weights.

The Monotype Corporation produced its version of Rockwell in 1934; unfortunately, some of the literature erroneously referred to it as Stymie Bold, thereby creating confusion that still exists today.

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/.21/ Minion

Minion Pro is an Adobe Original serif typeface designed by Robert Slimbach. The first version of Minion was released in 1990. Cyrillic additions were released in 1992, and finally the OpenType Pro version was released in 2000.

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/.22/ Sabon

A descendant of the types of Claude Garamond, Sabon was designed by Jan Tschichold in 1964 and jointly released by Stempel, Linotype, and Monotype foundries.

The roman design is based on a Garamond specimen printed by Konrad F. Berner, who was married to the widow of another printer, Jacques Sabon. The italic design is based on types by Robert Granjon, a contemporary of Garamond’s.

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/.23/ Cocon

Cocon is the most recent of this collection, designed in 1998 by Evert Bloemsma, Cocon features some cool letterforms with sleek points.

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/.24/ Rotis (SansSerif)

The Rotis family was designed in 1989 by Otl Aicher for Agfa; his last type design.

Rotis pioneered the idea of matching subfamilies: Sans Serif, Semi Sans, Semi Serif, and Serif. Readily identifiable in all four subfamilies is the leftward leaning upper and lowercase C.
Rotis was built with exceptionally high legibility in mind.

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/.25/ Bembo

Bembo was modeled on typefaces cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldus Manutius’ printing of De Aetna in 1495 in Venice, a book by classicist Pietro Bembo about his visit to Mount Etna. Griffo’s design is considered one of the first of the old style typefaces, which include Garamond, that were used as staple text types in Europe for two hundred years.

Bembo is one of the most popular typefaces used in books, first printed in 1496 and brought to life for the modern age in 1929.

Offcourse this collection of types is very personal but I think that these types are used the most in graphic design. Some of the descriptions of these types is copied from myfonts.com

 

{This article contains : 1755 words}

 

 

 

More Posts about this Topic:

• Top 10 Fonts of 2009 (MyFonts.com) → January 7, 2010
• The Best Free Typefaces (‘fontfamilies’) → December 23, 2009
• Top 10 Fonts of 2008 → January 15, 2009
• How to Use and Install Your Fonts → January 5, 2009
• How to Choose the Right Font(s) → January 5, 2009

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