10 MS fonts list - Technology in the Mearns

BURIED TREASURE
Bell
Britannic
Pristina Eras
Castellar
Vladimir Script Onyx News Gothic
I
nstall a Microsoft product onto your computer
and you will become the proud owner of a suite
of new fonts. More than 100 are bundled with
Microsoft Publisher 2000 alone. But you get little
guidance as to what these fonts are, and how you can
best use them, which is why many people never go
beyond the default fonts such as Times New Roman.
After requests from a number of readers, we have
categorised and annotated the list. Our selection
contains about 80 fonts, ranging from the practical to
the esoteric. We have left out what we consider the
least useful and most bizarre selections.
DesignTutor magazine is published quarterly. This list is based on an article
published in DesignTutor No. 8.
To get a specimen copy visit our website, www.designtutor.com.
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Contents © DesignTutor UK Ltd 2002.
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Microsoft provides a comprehensive database of the
fonts provided with each program at its website:
www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/default.asp
For most, but not all fonts, the website also contains an
individual brief note, usually something about its
history or designer. However, the website takes a long
time to serve these up to you, and information on each
font can only be accessed one at a time. It also does not
show samples of the actual fonts. The notes, however,
have been a useful source for this list.
Technical note:Microsoft Publisher and its related fonts are not available on the
Mac platform. Therefore we have had to convert many of the fonts seen on the
following pages from PC Truetype format to Mac Truetype, so that we could use
them in QuarkXPress, the program we use on our Macs to produce both
DesignTutor magazine and this document. For this, we used the conversion
program, TransType, available from its manufacturer, FontLab at
www.fontlab.com
(four issues)
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DesignTutor guide to Microsoft fonts 1
Serif text/headline fonts
Serif fonts run from ‘classical’ typesetting fonts through
to more modern designs and recreations. Most of these
work well for text setting. You can use the bold version
for display, or choose something else – a sans serif
perhaps – to add contrast.
Baskerville Old Face
Garamond
The quick brown Fox 123£
The quick brown Fox 123£
Perhaps the most famous English Transitional style font, dating from the
mid 18th century. Once very overused, now perhaps due for a revival.
Bell
The quick brown Fox 123&
Lovely late 18th century English font. Transitional in style but veering
towards Modern. Unusual figures, only three-quarters of the cap height.
Book Antiqua
The quick brown Fox 123£
A fine oldstyle font, designed by Monotype. A close copy of Hermann
Zapf’s Palatino, for a long time the only distinguished serif font available
for DTPuse.
One of the many versions of Garamond, based on 16th century French
design. Elegant oldstyle.
Georgia
The quick brown Fox 123£
Specially designed for web use by Matthew Carter. Large x-height and wide
counters make it very readable even in small sizes. Excellent for web work.
Goudy Old Style
The quick brown Fox 123£
Another of the prolific Goudy’s fonts, some of which are more eccentric
than others. Good text font.
Bookman Old Style
The quick brown Fox 123£
Dark, Art Nouveau-ish look. Once very popular font dating from about
1900. Needs quite a lot of leading.
1990s recreation of a 15th century Italian font. Like Centaur has small xheight, but a lot darker in colour.
Lucida Bright
The quick brown Fox 123£
Oldstyle font, based on a 1930s design by Frederic Goudy. Elegant,
mannered, with a classical feel.
Most programs come with several fonts from the Lucida family, designed
to work together. This is the seriffed font, slightly condensed with sharp
serifs.
Calisto
Modern No. 20
The quick brown Fox 123£
The quick brown Fox 123£
Elegant, classically proportioned, with even, darkish colour. A good general
text or display font.
Modern early 20th century font, very popular style at that time. Similar to
the ‘Scotch’ style Moderns.
Centaur
Perpetua
The quick brown Fox 123£
The quick brown Fox 123£
This is a recreation of one of the earliest 15th century Italian fonts. Light in
colour, small body.
Century Schoolbook
The quick brown Fox 123£
Modelled on the late Victorian Clarendons but a little lighter in colour.
Solid, legible, but rather dull.
Footlight Light
The quick brown Fox 123£
Informal, sharp-seriffed. Not good for continuous reading, but adds
sparkle to small amounts of text.
All Eric Gill’s fonts have an inscriptional quality formed by his stonecutting
experience. Quirky, individual lower case. Classical capitals.
Poor Richard
The quick brown Fox 123£
Very mannered font recreating a font first designed in 1919. Definitely not
for continuous reading, but would add a certain period style in some
situations.
Times New Roman
The quick brown Fox 123£
What more can we say?The most ubiquitous font of the 20th century is
the default in most DTP and web design software programs. Use it
consciously and it will serve you well.
DesignTutor guide to Microsoft fonts 2
Display serif fonts
A small number of serif fonts make good display choices.
Look either to complement your chosen text font, or to
provide effective contrast. Sometimes choosing fonts by
the same designer, or from the same period, works well.
Titling fonts
Capital-only fonts, known as ‘titlings’, are good for
headings and other display uses. Usually upmarket,
‘classical’ in style, and shouldn’t be overused.
Cooper Black
Castellar
The quick Fox 123£
The quick Fox 123£
Big, rounded letters characterise this 1920s font, which was also very
popular in the 1970s.
Bernard Condensed
The quick brown Fox 123£
Elegant inline design, goes well with oldstyle fonts.
Felix Titling
The quick Fox 123£
A 1930s redrawing of a 15th century Italian titling.
Modelled on a 1920s German font. Very condensed letterforms and huge
x-height.
Elephant
The quick Fox 123£
PERPETUA TITLING
THE QUICK FOX 123&£
Capital-only version of Gill’s great font. For distinguished settings and
traditional themes.
Matthew Carter’s reworking of a Victorian ‘fatface’.
1930s style condensed Modern style font, with straight styles and
geometric lines.
Onyx
The quick brown Fox 123£
Very condensed face dating from the 1930s. Closely related to the Bodoni
type of Modern style fonts.
DesignTutor guide to Microsoft fonts 3
Slab serif, Latin
and Clarendon fonts
Slab serifs, and their close cousins, the Latins and
Clarendons, contrast well with serifs or sans serifs. Can
be used as a text font, but in small quantities.
Courier New
The quick brown Fox 123£
The IBMtypewriter font, redrawn by Adrian Frutiger, no less. Always
looks light on the page.
Display sans serif fonts
Some useful sans serif fonts are included which are too
heavy for text setting but are fine for display. They all
make good contrast fonts for use with both serif and sans
serif text. Choose a related sans or serif font from the
same period for the most harmonious combination.
Britannic Bold
The quick brown Fox 123£
Thick/thin sans serif font, typical of a style commonly seen in the early
20th century. Useful for contrast.
Copperplate Gothic
The quick Fox 123£
Tiny tick serifs are the characteristics of this much imitated font, popular
for years for business cards.
Engravers
The quick Fox 123£
Pronounced thick-thin contrast and triangular serifs make the bold
version of this font useful for display.
1960s German sans serif, typical of the period, being very condensed and
very dark in colour. A fine font for display and contrast.
Impact
The quick brown Fox 123£
An English sans, also from the 1960s, with more thick/thin contrast than
continental fonts. From the famous Stephenson Blake type foundry, in
Sheffield, which gives it a gritty ‘kitchen sink drama’ feel.
Playbill
The quick brown Fox 123£
This 1930s font revived a Victorian heavy serif type. Good for ‘WANTED’
posters or pastiche playbills.
Rockwell
The quick brown Fox 123£
Also a 1930s Victorian revival. Very versatile.
Wide Latin
Quick fox 123£
Surely the world’s widest font. Use sparingly!
DesignTutor guide to Microsoft fonts 4
Sans serif text/
headline fonts
Most of these sans serifs work well for both text and
display. Choose carefully from the wide range of periods
and styles to suit your particular job.
Abadi
The quick brown Fox 123£
A versatile contemporary sans serif, rather condensed and with a large xheight. Humanist characteristics make it easy to read.
with clear open characters.
OCR A Extended
The quick Fox 123£
Hardly a text font, although it has been used by some to show how wittily
post-modern they are. Use for contrast or display.
Squarish letterforms and monotone look give a distinctive look to this
recreation of one of the prolific M F Benton’s 1930s faces.
Arial
The quick brown Fox 123£
Arial’s ubiquity as a default font means it is often dismissed. It is softer and
more humanist in style than Helvetica, with terminal strokes cut
diagonally.
News Gothic
The quick brown Fox 123£
M F Benton was a prolific American designer from the early 20th century.
This is lighter and more condensed than perhaps his most famous sans
serif, Franklin Gothic, but shows many similarities.
Trebuchet
The quick brown Fox 123£
Specially designed for Microsoft by Vincent Connare, as one of the core
web fonts, to work both in print and on the screen. Some quirkiness adds
to its character.
Modern recreation of a quirky American sans designed in the 1920s. Don’t
use for extended amounts of text setting.
Century Gothic
The quick brown Fox 123£
A geometric sans serif, based on Twentieth Century, which is also in the
Microsoft suite (see below). Similar to Futura, and shares its clean cut
1930s look, but more expanded in look.
Eras
Twentieth Century
The quick brown Fox 123£
A close copy of Futura, made by Monotype, and evoking the same period,
the 1920s.
Verdana
The quick brown Fox 123£
Like Georgia, designed by Matthew Carter, specially for web use. This fine
sans serif has rapidly become the web type of choice for the Discerning
Designer.
The quick brown Fox 123£
Late 1960s sans, rather wide, with large x-height. The roman font is slightly
angled.
Franklin Gothic
The quick brown Fox 123£
This centenarian’s deserved popularity derives from its legibility and
warmth, with thinning of the strokes at the joints and roman style ‘a’ and
‘g’.
Gill Sans
The quick brown Fox 123£
Gill’s ground-breaking sans serif goes in and out of fashion, but always
adds distinction. Good for text setting.
Lucida Sans
The quick brown Fox 123£
This sans serif member of the Lucida family is excellent for text setting,
DesignTutor guide to Microsoft fonts 5
Script fonts
A quarter of the fonts supplied with Publisher are scripts
– formal, informal and somewhere in between. Many are
very similar. See DesignTutor No. 7 for a lot more about
script fonts.
Blackadder
The quick brown Fox 123£
Wavery pastiche done for the famous TVshow.
Informal script, similar to Rage Italic, also supplied.
French Script
The quick brown Fox 123£
Bradley Hand
Formal script, in the French Ronde style.
The quick brown Fox 123£
Richard Bradley based this on his own writing.
Brush Script
Evokes 1930s cinema style – hence its name.
The quick brown Fox 123£
Famous 1940s style font, drawn with a brush.
Comic Sans
The quick brown Fox 123£
An informal font found in nearly all web browsers.
Curlz
The quick brown Fox 123£
Informal, 1950s feel. Very like Gigi, also supplied.
Edwardian Script
The quick brown Fox 123£
You get four ‘English’ scripts – Edwardian, Kunstler, Palace and Vladimir.
Two would surely be ample.
Forte
The quick brown Fox 123£
1960s Austrian, big and bold.
Freestyle Script
Very sloped lettering from the 1980s, with serifs.
Mistral
The quick brown Fox 123£
Tres francaise, tres chic, tres 1950s.
Pristina
The quick brown Fox 123£
Typically exuberant 1990s script by Phill Grimshaw.
Script MT Bold
The quick brown Fox 123£
Also called Monotype Script. Dates from 1930s.
Viner Hand
The quick brown Fox 123£
Informal 1990s font by British designer, John Viner.
The quick brown Fox 123£
DesignTutor guide to Microsoft fonts 6
Other display fonts
These fonts are those which are most misused by the
inexperienced designer. Some fall into the ‘What
possessed Microsoft to let people inflict their bad taste
on the rest of us’ category. Others are actually quite
useful. The secret is to choose a display font carefully, and
use it sparingly. Alittle can go a long way!
Algerian
The quick Fox 123£
Evokes Moorish Spain or North Africa.
Jokerman
The quick Fox 123£
Wacky, mid 1990s, fun font.
Bauhaus 93
Kino
The quick brown Fox 123£
The quick brown Fox 123£
1920s Germany. Quirky, not very readable.
Curious 1930s font with an odd shaved-off baseline.
Braggadocio
The quick Fox 123£
Big, bold, very 1930s.
Modelled on car and fridge door chrome lettering. Good for 1950s retro
work.
Broadway
The quick Fox 123£
Roaring 1920s ‘thick/thin’ font, with no descenders.
Colonna
The quick brown Fox 123£
Elegant, inline, fashion font from the 1920s.
Desdemona
Cut out of paper with a scalpel, to evoke the French painter’s running
figures. Good for special effects.
Old English Text
The quick brown Fox 123£
Classic English blackletter font.
The quick brown Fox 123£
Art Nouveau-ish font, originally from Vienna.
Goudy Stout
The Fox 123£
Funky Californian font from the 1990s, designed for flyers for raves.
The fattest fatface of them all.
Harrington
Curious distortions, but very readable. Based on lettering used in 1930s
department stores.
The quick brown Fox 123£
High-waisted, Art Nouveau in style.
Imprint Shadow
The quick brown Fox 123£
Inline display font, early 1920s in feel.
Cartoony, with Latin-style serifs. Full of energy.
Stencil
The quick Fox 123£
Stencil. Does what it says on the tin.
DesignTutor guide to Microsoft fonts 7