Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

Good to see Univers made the list. Quite fond of that font. As well as the Corpid collection (sadly it didn’t make the list). I think I’ve used it a little too religiously at times.

Either way, a great list. I’m going to go out and see if I can find Flex now. :D

A good list. However, I will add one more need for choosing a typeface – its readability across all platforms. It is a critical one for the web where the variety in client environments is maximum.

Wow – great resource! We chose our logo’s font from your list here.

Wow, nice job! I spend lots of time playing with fonts daily. This is a great resource!

Hmm. I don’t see my favorite on here….Trajan Pro
I have found a few new good ones however.

Great work! You guys are great. Now how about a list of free fonts (available) resembling the above ones…just a thought ;)
Thanks a million anyway.

I really love those font size/font face combos!!!
Great!

This is definetely going into my Typeface bookmarks.

Great reference typefaces for ideas and source. :)

Thanks.

very good work :)

@WobblyCyril

A font as versatile and fantastic as Comic Sans would outshine everything on the list :)

thanks for this – love it!

What use is this for?!

These fonts cost anywhere between $200-$1500 … you have to have to be either a huge design company or simply mentally retarded to spend that money on a font.

…when there are so many great ones that are absolutely free. Make a list of FREE good typefaces for professional design.

Uau! They all look absolutely amazing, but do we really need all that many fonts? I really liked reading this particular post.

A really good font-collection. Thank You!

thank u very much

excellent!!!!!

Nice list, but where the heck is Goudy?!

Great list. :) Priva Pro & depot are both in the list twice.

Just off the top of my head I’d add Gotham, Interstate, Klavika, anything Bodoni-based (I prefer Italian Didot)…

Great job! I love a lot of these and have for years.

@Ramzi – if you value your time you will gladly pay for a high-quality, well designed font rather than use some free “professional” font you downloaded off the web, since you will more than likely spend 2-3x as long manually adjusting the kerning in your type. I’m frequently shocked at how often I see bad typography marring otherwise good designs, even on projects with the kind of financial backing that would justify a higher attention to detail. It may seem trivial to some, but it is one small detail that separates the amateurs from the professionals.

The first one, in my opinion, should be Scala.

And the second one… MelloSans!

Fernando

Nice collection of fonts!

Great list. If only I had the cash or the knowledge to get all these wonderful fonts.

Wow! Great list. Now I don’t have to look through hundreds of useless fonts when I design something. thank you.

all the fonts look like arial and verdana, what good are the fancy fonts when the user dont have them, u will have to make everything image which will take forever to load. and this page is once again broken in IE6

amazing and beautiful collection of fonts. i’m in love

What – no Comic Sans?!

Seriously – fantastic list! I was actually surprised to see that I hadn’t seen half of these fonts. One thing though – isn’t Gill Sans overused at this point?

@ huangism: One acronym for ya – SiFR.

thanks for posting but I think that SERIF FONTS are a bit missing.
for instance, Goudy, Caslon, Garamond, etc.

….So, great WORK!!!!

It’s nice to see this postom SM. The posts are starting to get better again.

COOL!!!!!!!!!!

good list, but how can i download all those fonts

Post a torrent??

Designers made these fonts. Designers need to be payed in order to keep making things like this. When everyone downloads torrents of fonts, nobody is being payed to make them.

See the problem there? It’s disrespect.

I meant to ask this when I saw the Documentary film, Helvetica but given the room was full of intimidating designers, I declined. So I’ll ask it here. I love all the examples you’ve given in this post, but as a numbers guy I wondered whether a list of the top 80 fonts for numbers would be the same the list?

great, now your designs can look just like everyone elses…

I think DIN font family is the most trendy typeface nowadays.

Hey great list you got there. Thank God you named the title Typefaces and not font list. It annoys me when designers don’t know the difference between a typeface and a font.

wow – not sure about that list. Some I’d agrees with HelveticaNeue, Futura, etc – but others are kinda reaching. Myriad, for instance? It’s the default. What happened to the classic serif fonts? Garamond, Goudy, Giovanni. Or what Lubalin Graph – you listed Rockwell in lieu of Lubalin Graph? It’s easily the more superior slab serif.

Not impressed.

Very nice list… 2 that are new to me and I like are Glasgow and Priva Pro (this one you liste 2 times… see 55 and 62 :) I also liked the french one… Le Monde Courrier and Officina

Not that i’m complaining about your list (nor the choices from the different designers involved in choosing these fonts) but i in my modest opinion this list is too strongly biased to san serif typefaces (more then 80% os this list are san serifs). San serifs are so profusely used nowadays that they are becoming boring, specially when there’s a huge niche of beautifull serif’s and slab fonts around. I also must point that i would never , ever , use a font like Helvetica (or its numerous variants), Futura, Avenir, Din, FF Meta, FF Dax, The Sans (and i find extremely strange the this Lucas de Groot typeface didnt make it to the list since it was probably the most “instant classic” typeface designed in the last 2 decades) and the likes in any of my designs unless the client pointed a gun to my head… they where overused and abused to the point of extreme boringness! Also not so interesting is including on the list unavailable typefaces (like guardian that wont be available for some years since its a exclusive typeface) and unfinished typefaces, specially when the font scene is saturated with well designed san serif typefaces (its a world of choices out there). Unless your client is a huge corporation the is looking for a neutral image stay away from most of these san serifs (specially the classic ones) because you would be falling into the boring world of the typefaces everyone else is using. Apart from this there’s some unusual san serifs in the list that are quite interesting (not many tho since most are the usual classics) and unless you only design headlines and posters the lack of serifs in the list makes it kinda incomplete. Overall its interesting list but a very unbalanced one since theres no script fonts, very little choices of serifs (for text bodies), almost no slab serifs and nothing of any other type categories that can give you designs that original look.

BOOKMARKED! This will be a bunch of tools that i might be requiring. You might want to take this url for added reference.

I think it’s funny how Microsoft uses Helvetica as their logo font (post number 33), but include the “knockoff” Arial in their operating system.

Guess they should practice what they preach… huh!? Why not use Arial…?

But, great list though!

Fantastic list! I’ve already got some of them oO

Does anyone else think that there could be a much better (i.e. affordable) font pricing system? It seems to me that if more professional fonts were priced so that individuals could more reasonably afford them, foundries and designers might stand to profit a bit more than they currently do when it is a rare individual (or even design house) that buys its fonts…

Thoughts?

Olga isn’t published yet.

Urbana is now available for purchase at http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/cepuertas/urbana

New weights have been added and now I’m working on the italic versions.

I’ve been designing for awhile now (~20 years) — including some (iffy) font design (you can look me up). As many have said, I’m not sure what this list is for: Professionals should already have some go-to fonts in each category (sans/serif, display/fancy, Egyptienne/slab, script, etc); non-professionals need FEWER choices to avoid the kidnap note-pastiche that is often created by newbies. As for the sans/serif debate, the ‘need’ for design synergy & the ‘requirements’ of the web have forced a transition from the more readable serif to the more legible sans serif in body copy — something I don’t think will go away too soon. In fact, I’m seeing a trend that is just the opposite of what I was taught for print: Sans copy & serif headlines.

As for the users of this list: Many of these fonts are either dupes of more expensive (and very old) typefaces or are themselves one of the originals and has a freebie clone somewhere. Just pick one or two (or three as backups for variation) & stick with them. Make your copy design changes using size, color or callouts (pull quotes). Choose your fonts based on what you want to convey (formal or informal, etc).

And those of you who thought Comic Sans should be on the list: Huh?! Not even as a comic book font is Comic Sans a decent font. Check Blambot or Comicraft for REAL comic fonts.

Also, MS Arial was a dodge to escape paying Adobe fees for using Helvetica….

Amazing compilation! a great selection of all time readable and stylish fonts, a must have for professional graphic designers and a font guide for newbie designers.
Thanks for this useful post!

I am a media studies lecturer and would disagree with this comment. The typfaces are most interesting and of great use.

Very nice fonts but peoples browsers only show fonts they have on there pc so for web design use very limited.

Scala is a beautiful serif font. You show Scala Sans in your samples for Scala.

@juzta:

I think Mr Siegel has ‘left the building’ and will never return out of pure disgust for this post :P

Oh well…

The work is good but it is a pity that you have not included Knuth’s Computer Modern and Adobe’s New Century Schoolbook.

Can anyone say which of the sans serif fonts have a capital “I” with serifs, such as in OfficinaSans and BellGothic? I am the documentation manager for a hi-tech company and we are redesigning our manuals. Frequently part numbers and specification numbers use Roman numerals so it’s important to have an uppercase “I” that can’t be confused with a lower case “L.”

I am quite open to suggestions for fonts that cork well for technical documentation in print on the screen. My tendency is towards fonts that are somewhat condensed so I can fit a maximum of information on a page thereby minimizing pagination issues. The flip side is to avoid having pages looking too crowed.

All recommendations gratefully accepted.

TIA

YossiD

so fitting that helvetica is number one.

Excellent list.

I appreciate the effort put into making this list i will have this bookmarked and the list will most definitely help with my future endeavors.

Keep it up!

Please, i want the font family FF DIN free.
Thank you!!

Thank you for the nice collection

I like this long list of fonts

Want a link to download these fonts. whats the point of of us seeing it? We NEED them lol

Thanks for listing! Pretty typefaces;)

Hi this selection it’s great, but however i have one font for yuo:

Archer font, By Hoefler & There Jones, this a amazing fonts, they have many serius font.
I recomend you, visit they website…

http://www.typography.com/

Thanks again…

what a crappy list, you forgot all the Hoefler’s and Emigre’s fonts…

I wish someone here were bored enough to go and price these out. Wonder what the total purchase cost would be!

way too many. you should at least cut this list in half.

Great list!!!

I love that you placed Helvetica at the top. I know it tends to elicit strong responses from designers, both good and bad, but I think that’s a symptom of its power in design. As part of my personal design growth, I have crossed over from the “can’t stand it” to “love it deeply.” (This happened about the same time I stopped having favorite colors and started having favorite color combinations. There is no ugly color, only a color in the wrong context.)

There are many other amazing fonts on this list – thanks for the reference!

Does anyone have a link to download them all together? :)

absolutly fabulous

Sweet collection :) Thank you.

Awesome man! Really what a helping article!

Is it possible to download them all together?