I first saw this as many of you would about a year ago now and I knew it would come in handy one day. It features a compilation of the most used typefaces in the world and is gathered from a range of sources, all of which are mentioned and I plan to look at individually.
Die 100 Besten Schriften
This was one of the first sites I looked at off the list as it was generated by many professional and influential typographers. Click the link above to view the full list.
TDC Reviews
The Top 100 Types of All Time?
Paul Shaw did a survey of readers to list the top typefaces of all time. Here are the results.
Gutenberg's B-42 type
Nicolas Jenson's roman
Francesco Griffo's italic
Claude Garamond's roman
Firmin Didot's roman
Akzidenz Grotesk
Gebetbuch type
Cheltenham family
Helvetica
Aldus Manutius' roman
William Caslon IV's sans serif
William Caslon's roman
Pierre-Simon Fournier's italic
Futura
Times Roman
Chicago
Bell
Ludovico Arrighi da Vicenza's italic
Univers
Romain du Roi
Johann Michael Fleischmann's roman
Clarendon
ATF Garamond
Giambattista Bodoni's roman
Century Roman
Nicolas Kis' roman
Minion multiple master
Unger Fraktur
John Baskerville's roman
Lucida
Top 7 Fonts Used By Professionals In Graphic Design
1. Helvetica
Without a doubt, Helvetica is the most heavily used font by professionals (and also by the not so professional) in graphic design. Although some praise the font, many believe that it is spaced too tightly.
And as Vivien pleas in her 16 most overused fonts article, “Understand that you can’t always rely on Helvetica to illustrate and deliver your every message. Helvetica is not perfect for everyone and every occasion.”
2. Trajan
Trajan finds its way into many Hollywood movie posters and anything remotely to do with religion, law, marriage, class or the past. You can check out the flickr pool for more uses of Trajan.
A bit of history on the font Trajan… Trajan is an old style serif typeface designed in 1989 by Carol Twombly for Adobe. The design is based on Roman square capitals, as used for the inscription at the base of Trajan’s Column from which the typeface takes its name.
3. Garamond
Although there are many versions of Garamond, the most used version today is the Adobe Garamond version (as seen above) released in 1989. Garamond is a great font for magazines, textbooks, websites and long bodies of text and was recently named the second best font (after Helvetica) by a German publication.
4. Futura
Futura is a font that comes up often in large displays, logos, corporate typefaces and in books where small text is needed. It is based on geometric shapes (near-perfect circles, triangles and squares) which became representative of the Bauhaus design style of 1919–1933. Futura has an appearance of efficiency and forwardness. Some do hate the font though.
5. Bodoni
Bodoni is a great font for headlines, decorative text and logos. Bodoni has a narrow underlying structure with flat, unbracketed serifs. The face has extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, and an overall geometric construction which makes it a very aesthetic looking font.
6. Bickham Script Pro
Used mainly for formal occasions, Bickham Script Pro is a font which does the job well… Cameron Moll even recommended it in his article “Typefaces no one will get fired for using.” The ‘not-so-trained’ designer usually vouches for Vivaldi instead which is one of America’s most hated fonts. Another great alternative would be Sloop.
7. Frutiger
The Frutiger font family is neither strictly geometric nor humanistic in construction; its forms are designed so that each individual character is quickly and easily recognised. Such distinctness makes it good for signage and display work and it is often used in Web 2.0 Logos.
The full family has a warmth and subtlety that have, in recent years, made it popular for the smaller scale of body text in magazines and booklets.
Close Contenders
Here are some other fonts many ‘professional’ designers use quite often; Gills Sans, FF DIN, Franklin Gothic, Bembo, Rockwell, Avenir, Avant Garde, MrsEaves, Gotham, Sabon, Warnock Pro. Notice that none of these are fonts are downloadable for free?
21 Most Used Fonts By Professional Designers
The fonts are one of the most important parts of every web Project. All though there have been many other selective collection font posts around which most of the time leads to big confusions Like which typefaces is really useful for your project or how to choose your font from the list of hundred fonts.
We spent last whole week reviewing dozens of font reservoirs and typography articles about fonts usability and popularity. Finally we end up with a list of 21 Most Used Fonts by Professional Designers in Web Designing World. All the screenshots made in such a way that there is no point of confusion. You can directly check the actual preview and corresponding font type.
The basic purpose behind this post is to show popular font types. there is no direct download link available for any font. You can find some related references at the end of the post.
1. Helvetica
2. Frutiger
3. Myriad Pro
4. Avenir Std
5. Trajan
6. Optima Std
7. ITC Franklin Gothic Std
8. Futura
9. Bickham Script
10. Univers
11. Eurostile
12. Interstate
13. Trade Gothic
14. Gill Sans
15. Warnock
16. Kepler
17. Bodoni
18. Bembo
19. Rockwell
20. Meta
21. Gotham
