Smart Typography Tip from a Pro
(excerpted from Cameron Moll, at http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000240.html)
Selecting “familiar” typefaces:
Don’t reinvent the wheel here. Start with faces you’re familiar with and have trusted in previous projects. If you’re a newbie, go with faces others have trusted in previous projects. Fact is, my base set of typefaces doesn’t consist of much other than typefaces that have already been used by others for years, even centuries. Garamond, Frutiger, Edwardian Script, Trade Gothic, and so on.
Typeface selection is one of the most transparent ways of detecting good — and bad — design.
You can tell plenty about a designer merely by the typefaces he/she chooses. So you’d be wise to start with trusted faces, and you’d be even wiser to know something about the history of each typeface. Frutiger, for example, was designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1968 for the new Charles de Gaulle Airport. (update: see Spiekermann’s comment). That tells me Frutiger is probably a very legible typeface at a variety of sizes, among other things.
Then, over the years, I’ve added newer typefaces, such Trajan Pro, Avenir, Fette Engschrift, and Bickham Script Pro. But even then, many of these newer faces still find their roots in classic typography.
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