Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.
60 Brilliant Typefaces For Corporate Design
Typography is more than being legible and looking good. Among other things, effective typography manages to achieve two important objectives: a) to create an appropriate atmosphere and enable users to develop trust toward the site and b) to make sure visitors get the main message of the site and (if possible) become interested in the services offered on the site. Since written text is the most efficient instrument to communicate with visitors precisely and directly, the power of typography shouldn’t be underestimated.
To communicate effectively, typography requires appropriate typefaces. Last year we’ve presented 80 Beautiful Typefaces For Professional Design, a selection of excellent typefaces one should be aware of when developing web-sites. Now it’s time to update our selection with typefaces we’ve missed then and new typefaces which have been developed over the last year.
Below you’ll find over 60 first-class typefaces for corporate design. Please notice that they are not free; however, we’ve focused on typefaces which are definitely worth spending money on. So which typefaces are “bulletproof”? What fonts can be used effectively in almost every Corporate Design? And what are the options for unique, but still incredibly beautiful typefaces? Let’s find out.
You might also want to take a look at the
- post 40 Free Fonts For Professional Design and
- at the section Fonts which has a number of typography-related posts.
60 Excellent Typefaces For Corporate Design
Haptic
The Haptic family is a sans serif typeface which was optimized for use in small sized text. It serves well in attention seeking headlines. Comes in Roman and Italic with seven weights each. Type & Graphics by Henning Skibbe.
FF Meta Serif
A collaborative work by Erik Spiekermann, Christian Schwarty and Kris Sowersby. The designers created a typeface with metrics that are not identical to FF Meta, but optically the same. Now what you see is what you get, a harmonious serif/sans type system. FF Meta Serif is available in four weights: Book, Medium, Bold, and Black, each with Italics. All styles include Small Caps, lining and oldstyle figures in proportional and tabular widths, and a range of arrows and other symbols.
Museo
A contemporary semi-slab serif font. This OpenType font family comes in five weights and offers supports CE languages and even esperanto. Beside ligatures, contextual alternatives, stylistic alternates, fractions and proportional/tabular figures Museo also has a ‘case’ feature for case-sensitive forms. This typeface comes in 5 weights; three of them are free.
Beorcana
Beorcana is a calligraphic sans, or serifless roman. Beorcana is unusual for a sans serif type; it is designed for extended reading. Beorcana fills a niche in book typography and also serves a wide range of purposes from fine print, cartography, and information design to signage, editorial design and invitations. Designed by Carl Crossgrove. “Beorcana has what it takes to become a classic.”
Gloriola
Type System / Superfamily winning entry on TDC2 2008. Designed by Tomáš Brousil from Prague, Czech Republic.
Agile Typeface
This typeface was born as Endexamen of the postgraduate study TypeMedia in The Hague. Not released yet, but worth to be kept in mind.
Marat
Marat is an elegant typeface with a soft and friendly appearance. It comes in 5 different weights and includes Italics, Small Caps, various OpenType features and a wide range of language support. Each font includes oldstyle and lining figures, both proportional and tabular. Created by Ludwig Übele from Den Haag, The Netherlands.
Graphik
“I ended up drawing inspiration from all parts of the 20th century. The heavy end of the family is based in part on Paul Renner’s Plak, a relatively obscure display typeface cut only in large sizes of woodtype, that is related to his heavier weights of Futura but has rounder, friendlier, fatter proportions“. By Christian Schwartz.
Rondana
Rondana is a tribute to the purity of line and futuristic aesthetics of the 60s and 70s. Geometry in service of Typography, rather than opposite.
Stag Sans
“The normal/quirky balance is a bit different in the heavy weights, which are more likely to be used for enormous headlines. The final result is a perfect match for Stag, and also works as a muscular counterpoint to just about any elegant serif face.”
Candy Script
Inspired by Argentina and its culture, Alejandro Paul’s Candy Script captures the country’s spirit. It comes from the tradition of window sign painting, but its thick hand-brushed characters — with alternates for almost every upper and lowercase letter – have a personality all their own. Tons of OpenType alternates included, over 600 characters in all.
FF Utility
Designed by Lukas Schneider. Comes in give weights — light, regular, medium, bold and black.
Ealing
Round, elegant and pretty thin. Six weights by Michael Parson.
Publico
The openness of the headline face made designing a matching text face very straightforward. Elegance gives way to sturdiness in the serifs, and the ball terminals are less pronounced, resulting in an even texture. Like Guardian Egyptian, Publico Text is drawn to work under the specific layout and printing conditions of newspapers but doesn’t take its design cues from traditional newspaper typefaces, resulting in a fresh and contemporary look.
Affair
Affair is an new calligraphic typeface by Alejandro Paul with a party full of swash characters, ligatures, and ornaments. By default, it’s simply an elegant yet readable display face. Dress it up with alternates, and it becomes irresistibly attractive, in styles from glamourous to over-the-top.
Prelo
A large sans-serif family with 18 weights with ligatures, alternates, fractions, scientific inferiors, superscript, swashes, oldstyle figures, lining figures, tabular figures, numerators, denominators, ordinals and smallcaps.
DST Glosa
A traditional, roman serif-family which comes in 8 weights (roman, roman italic, medium, medium italic, bold, bold italic, black, black italic) and has a number of additional features. OpenType.
Olicana
Beautiful hand-drawing in action. Comes in two weights — rough and smooth. Designed by Nick Cooke.
Malaga
“At first glance Malaga has all the earmarks of a sturdy old style serif that would hold up well to any amount of reading. Healthy spacing, large x-height, short ascenders and descenders. It is the second glance that has you realizing that it is perfect as well for larger headlines and bolder statements.” A modern classic by Xavier Dupré.
FF Unit Rounded
Designed by Erik Spiekermann.
Costa PTF
Costa ptf was designed to be appropriate for any use where you might desire to give an informal look in titling sizes but still need good legibility in small text sizes.
Arno Pro
“A multi-weight, multi-style, multi-optical sized, multi-lingual family of fonts in the classic Venetian tradition. It comes bundled with Adobe Creative Suite 3, and it’s almost worth upgrading just to get Arno.” Designed by Robert Slimbach.
Kinescope
Kinescope is a dashing 1940s-style brush script. It was inspired by hand-lettered titles in Fleischer Brothers’ Superman cartoon series. This font features OpenType to automatically choose the most aesthetically pleasing letter shapes as you type as well as extended language support. By Mark Simonson.
Anziano
A typeface for books. When creating a traditional typeface, Stefan Hattenbach was influenced by earlier designs. Anziano shows touches of Weiss (Emil Rudolf Weiss, 1926) – another classic book typeface. Stefan had appreciated the design of Weiss for a long time.
Celeste Sans OT
This OpenType serif family comes in 10 weights.
Sloop
Hand-writing: sexy, elegant, feminine and inviting.
Presidencia
This typeface is supposed to become an institutional typeface. Designed by Gabriel Martínez Meave from Mexico City. Winner of the TDC2 2008 award in the category “Text / Type Family”.
Buffet Script
Buffet Script is based on calligraphy by Alf Becker, arguably the greatest American sign lettering artist of all time. Buffet Script’s OpenType programming contains discretionary ligatures, stylistic and contextual alternates, all interacting with each other to allow the composition of just the typographic look and feel. This font is best used where lush elegance is a design requirement.
Ronnia
One of the most remarkable characteristic of this humanistic sans serif is its versatility. Ronnia’s personality performs admirably in headlines, but is diffident enough for continuous text and small text alike. Ronnia features about 800 characters per weight, including small caps, fractions, old style and lining numbers, scientific superior/inferior figures, and a set of symbols and arrows. It supports over 40 languages that use the Latin extended alphabet.
Trinité
Classic, created by Bram de Does in 1982.
Newzald
A decent, hardworking serif designed for the international editorial environment. Its economical rigour is drawn from classic Dutch typefaces by J.F. Rosart and J.M. Fleischmann. Newzald’s large x-height and slightly condensed forms allow many words to the column without looking cramped or ungainly.
Bree
A typeface with a strong personality.
Dancer
By Morten Olsen.
Quiosco

Thesis
An ultimate corporate typeface, designed by Lucas de Groot. Including 144 fonts, both serif and sans-serif fonts.
Nexus
Designed by William McChesney. Comes in bold, bold oblique, oblique and regular. Price: $49 for all 4 weights.
Vesper
Currently in development.
Frida (.pdf)
Sources and Resources
- Typographica’s Favorite Typefaces of 2007
Typographica’s fourth annual review showcases the best in new typeface design. - I Love Typography
An ultimate blog about typography. - Type Director’s Club
The annual typeface competition by Type Director’s Club. - Typefacedesign.org
Work from the MA Typeface Design class of 2007 at the University of Reading. - 100 Best Typefaces Of All Time
An outstanding selection by Fontshop.de. - Type foundries: Fontshop.com, Emigre, Veer, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Linotype and many-many more.
Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine (www.smashingmagazine.com), an online magazine dedicated to designers and developers.
- 74 Comments
- 1
- 2March 20th, 2008 9:28 am
My favorite by far is Olicana! Absolutely awesome quill script!
- 3March 20th, 2008 9:30 am
Once again, thank you! This site continues to amaze me.
- 4March 20th, 2008 9:46 am
Thank you for featuring Typographica’s picks in your list. A couple of corrections:
- Your FF Celeste Sans and Sloop labels are mistakenly swapped.
- I would like to FontShop.com for FontFonts, rather than FontShop.de as it is more accessible to a global audience. Here are links to FF Unit Rounded (you missed the “Rounded” in your label) and FF Utility.
- 5March 20th, 2008 9:49 am
Incredible collection!
(FF Unit was mentioned twice though, is this intentional?)
- 6March 20th, 2008 10:20 am
Quantity. Why not list 5 or 10, with some information to go with?
- 8March 20th, 2008 10:37 am
heavenly types. too bad they aren’t free :(
- 9March 20th, 2008 10:41 am
I guess I’m cheap… I prefer your free font lists. But as a designer myself I can understand that designers want to get paid. The irony of it!
- 10March 20th, 2008 11:22 am
These are glorious days for typography: the quality and quantity of fonts being developed is impressive. I’ve followed closely the emergence of new digital foundries since the first years of the www, and the changes in the last five years or so in the websites are amazing.
- 11
- 12March 20th, 2008 11:58 am
Great effort as always, though I have to give Thor a point here. It’s a really impressive list of beautiful characters, but I would have liked to learn why you picked these typefaces, why they are especially suitable for Corporate Design, in this case.
By the way: Still the FF Unit is shown as and linked to the FF Unit Rounded.
- 13March 20th, 2008 12:13 pm
Great collection! Thanks a million!
- 14March 20th, 2008 12:35 pm
I appreciate you guys compiling this list, but I lost interest as soon as the first font I investigated, Graphik, was found to not even be available for licensing yet. The faces may be brilliant, but please make sure that they’re out there for us to use.
Also, it helps if you can link these typefaces to pages where we can buy them so we don’t have to click through another blog.
Keep up the good work! Just giving you a heads up.
- 15March 20th, 2008 12:52 pm
Too bad you dont list which are free. A lot of those are really great.
- 16March 20th, 2008 1:24 pm
Thanks for this huge list, really like Olicana.
- 17March 20th, 2008 1:37 pm
Hmm, your FF Utility and FF Unit Rounded links are still going to fontshop.de.
- 18March 20th, 2008 1:41 pm
Thomas Allen:
Also, it helps if you can link these typefaces to pages where we can buy them so we don’t have to click through another blog.
Sometimes people want to educate themselves, not simply buy. Also, many of the images that Smashing uses come from other blogs so it’s polite to link to the source.
- 19March 20th, 2008 2:42 pm
Man, they are pretty, I could almost eat some of them :) thanks for the list
- 20March 20th, 2008 3:09 pm
Amazing collection. smashingmagazine is for me the best magazine on the web, I’m addicted of your posts.
It’s in my top five best websites on the net.
Thank you for the hard work you’re doing and for your brillant collections.
FROM a Tunisian designer. - 21March 20th, 2008 3:45 pm
About the Marat type sample, do you know how the Finnish town of Pieksämäki got in that one?
- 22March 20th, 2008 6:37 pm
I love the Ealing and Nexus. Awesome article, like always. I’d love an article on what plugins you use. Also, how you styled your comment form and how you made the Comments/Pingbacks tab thing. I love this site!
- 23March 20th, 2008 7:11 pm
bó tay, … i really like this site
- 24March 21st, 2008 1:10 am
too bad they are not free
- 25March 21st, 2008 1:23 am
Thanks for the font roundup. Some nice fonts, although the article is not very structured. Maby put them in categories serif, sans serif and so on. Anyway also take a closer look at Calibri font by dutch type designer Lucas de Groot.
- 26March 21st, 2008 2:24 am
Damn! we owe you guys again;) Thanks for an really excellent list.
- 27March 21st, 2008 2:37 am
I often visit Smashing Mag and wonder why you do not come up with some kind of bundle with articles like these? I’ve fallen in love with most of the typefaces in this article and would love to buy them. Perhaps you could arrange some sort of deals with some discount?
- 29March 21st, 2008 3:43 am
What? No FF Dax and FF Dax Wide?
The FF Dax Family has been featured by such corporations as UPS and Lenovo, among others.
- 30March 21st, 2008 5:40 am
Instead of a link to a shop, I would much more appreciate links to the foundry and/or the designer of the typeface.
Never had a problem with links to other blogs though. Hey, what’s more exciting than discovering new blogs while hunting for type on the web?Doesn’t mean anything could catch up with Smashing …
- 32March 23rd, 2008 4:14 am
darn, I spend much time reading your good posts and investigating all the types. Keep it up smashing!
- 33March 23rd, 2008 5:06 am
Thanks for this font list !
- 34March 23rd, 2008 10:10 am
I’d like to see a download link for the entire pack alltogether.
- 35March 24th, 2008 12:38 am
Really Great List of Fonts.
- 36March 24th, 2008 1:36 am
Really , Smashing stuff .
- 37March 24th, 2008 11:35 am
This article helps me with my current project. Thanks for your wonderful weblog post!
- 38March 25th, 2008 12:21 am
Great fonts.
- 39March 25th, 2008 3:30 am
Droolworthy. I just want to go out and design type only logotypes!
- 40March 25th, 2008 2:48 pm
Gloriola looks lot like Auto from Underware..
Trinité is, in my humble opinion, the most beautiful font around. - 41March 26th, 2008 4:07 am
Once again, some great content on fonts. Some of these fonts will look excellent on some poster I’ve got in mind.
Many Thanks
- 42April 2nd, 2008 9:58 pm
Great Summary with much great new ideas to develop an own style by brilliant typefaces.
Ralph
- 43April 5th, 2008 6:00 am
I’m glad to see this many typefaces from ‘latin’ designers and foundries (portuguese- and spanish- speaking people) being featured here.
Thanks for another great post!
- 44April 7th, 2008 12:48 pm
lindisimas gracias!!!
- 45May 2nd, 2008 3:08 pm
Can you provide allfontspackage.zip ?
Plz… i want download all fonts at same time :(
- 46May 20th, 2008 10:29 am
Did someone try to calculate how much would cost the complete library ?
- 47May 29th, 2008 8:51 am
The typeface designed by William McChesney, is call Nox not Nexus ;-)
- 48June 7th, 2008 4:27 am
This is the most fantastic post. Thanks!
- 49June 7th, 2008 4:30 am
The most fantastic post. Thanks!
- 50
- 51August 31st, 2008 9:26 pm
greed site this cube white red clean joke university we glass
- 52October 10th, 2008 8:27 am
Excelente artículo!!!! de verdad muy bueno para todos los que estamos en el medio.
- 53October 11th, 2008 5:58 pm
Prelo rocks!
- 54October 16th, 2008 3:22 pm
candy script is gorgeous… and thanks to xtra i now know how to say ok in chinese…
by the way, ive always found these type samples to be works of art themselves… the way their arranged, its so appealing.
- 55October 23rd, 2008 4:48 am
ITS REALLY NICE YAAR
THNX - 56December 3rd, 2008 12:34 pm
brilliant typefaces
amazing and more than amazing !!! - 57December 19th, 2008 11:17 am
You never fail to amaze and this compilation is another great example of creativity. But…
As a designer who has worked with Fortune 1000/500 companies for a couple of decades, I must agree with comment #21 by SEO Love that I necessarily wouldn’t categorize all of these fonts as suitable for “corporate”. Many of these I in my opinion are “decorative” in style. Advertisements, websites, one-off designs…. but not an annual report, new business presentation, senior (ie CFO/CEO) presentation or an investor fact sheet.
- 58December 20th, 2008 7:37 am
哇这么多字体呀 !!!
wayu.cn
- 59
- 60December 21st, 2008 4:23 am
IT’s very good!Thank you!~
- 61December 27th, 2008 6:29 pm
I LOVE fonts! Olicana and ealing are my two favorites. I like collecting fonts, its unfortunate i can’t pay for fonts, no money for that. if i struck rich i’d buy a lot from this list
- 62
- 63January 20th, 2009 5:09 am
thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!
- 64January 28th, 2009 9:21 pm
Candy Script for corporate design! Hardly. Maybe for the logo of a trendy web 2.0 blog :)
- 65February 23rd, 2009 11:48 pm
Thancx a lot. this saves me a lotta time. great collection.
- 66March 18th, 2009 11:02 am
great! this is very usefull!
i am looking for font 4my new site Soziale Welle
any tipps?
- 67June 5th, 2009 6:12 am
Thanks guys for the list. It’s amazing.
I would also suggest you to use our free font archive at http://www.pimpyourfont.com
it contains more than 10.000 of totally FREE truetype fonts and they all are available for free download.Hope you all will enjoy this nice startup
- 68July 29th, 2009 2:01 pm
Awesome font’s, beautiful designs!.
- 69September 4th, 2009 10:32 pm
great. thanks.
- 70September 15th, 2009 6:10 am
Wonderful list! Do you have a price for all these added up? :)
- 71
- 72October 11th, 2009 8:21 pm
Great selection!
- 73October 15th, 2009 6:20 pm
Quite good, the main because it is free of charge……
- 74November 5th, 2009 9:35 pm
too bad they are not free
- 00
There are no trackbacks at this time. If you are interested in leaving a trackback, please use this URL.
Leave a Comment
Make sure you enter the * required information where indicated. Please also rate the article as it will help us decide future content and posts. Comments are moderated – and rel="nofollow" is in use. Please no link dropping, no keywords or domains as names; do not spam, and do not advertise!
Interact
Popular
- 100 Wordpress Themes
- Photoshop Tutorials
- Fantastic Wallpapers
- 40+ Excellent Freefonts
- Dual-Screen Wallpapers
- Wordpress Themes for 2009
- Illustrator Tutorials
- Incredible Free Icon Sets
- High-Quality Free Fonts
- 30 Scripts For Galleries
- Photoshop Text Effects
- Useful Icon Sets
- Web Design Trends
- iPhone Wallpapers
- Before Launching a Website
- CSS Layouts And Templates
- Photoshop Actions
- Stunning Pictures and Photos
- Fantastic HDR Pictures
- Logo Design Tutorials
- Free Design Templates
- 10 Mistakes In Logo Design
- Photoshop Custom Shapes
- 40 Creative Design Layouts
- 8 Layout Solutions
- 53 CSS Techniques
- Photography Techniques
- Black & White Photography
- Styling Design Elements
- CSS-Based Forms
- 50 jQuery Techniques
- 50 Portfolio Websites
- 50 CSS Techniques
- Creative Logo Designs
- Desktop Wallpapers
- 25 Open Source Mac Apps
- 50 Free Icon Sets
- The Big Showcase Of Online T-Shirt Stores - http://bit.ly/5Tq8uA
- @ilmv oh ok then ;)
- @ilmv no, the SM Book will not be out of date :) We made sure it contains universal design, usability and marketing principles.
- Apple ad bombing Windows 7 on Google - http://bit.ly/28ctPq
- Atatonic - a fresh CSS framework - http://bit.ly/4oOV2w (via @umutm)
- @HrvojeKC yes, that's an interesting idea. Maybe when the waiting is over, we'll write a detailed post about it.





























































brilliant collection, thx