Favorite fonts?

[kestrell]

I realize that I am opening a serious can of geeky worms by asking this, and I even encourage that, so...

Do folks have favorite fonts?

I'm trying to decide on a font for my webpages. I want something sans serif and accessible/easy to read, but also something that evokes books. My favorite font is actually futura, which is what my business cards are in, because it is both supposedly the most easy to view font--it's a geometric sanse serif-- and associated with space travel and science fiction, due to being the easiest to see at the farthest distance. For some reason, however, it is suggested that futura should only be used for headings and signage.

Comments

Favourite fonts?

[dewline]

Oh, I have a list of my own, alright. Futura Medium certainly has its moments on that list because of its usage on Space: 1999 titles back in the 1970's. Futura Condensed Extra Bold is forever tied in my comics-fandom brain to Watchmen covers. I would argue for Futura Medium as a text font, but...whoever made that choice for Gerry and Sylvia Anderson back then chose well.

There's a lot of others on that list of personal favourites, with varying degrees and kinds of legibility issues. I should probably save that for an entry on my own DW account.

[totient]

I adore P22 Underground which is sans serif except for the lowercase l, which gets a little tail so you can tell it from a capital I. It manages to be clean and distinctive at the same time. The nearest free thing is probably Trebuchet MS, which is in use on some styles on this very website. But the real thing is totally worth the $25 in my opinion.

I'm opening a can o worms!

[jesse_the_k]

Google Fonts provides a range of nice sans serifs. Client browsers have to download the font when opening the site, so it's less polite than specifying one of the "standard" fonts available on most OSes. Roboto and Lato are both sturdy sans. Lato has the round lowercase a that's similiar to Futura's, as opposed to Roboto's two-story version.

As far as weight goes, start with a medium for body text.

But each OS comes with its own font collection. Even "work-alike" fonts aren't identical. At various points, Apple's and Microsoft's Times New Roman were different.

So my vote is "user browser default" so specify "sans serif." If it's important to the end user, they can change their browser default to suit. I vary my defaults on a browser basis -- PT Sans or Roboto are my usuals for sans serif.