Vision218

I recently came across a great article called "20 Typefaces To Start a Designer's Career"; revived by Jacob Cass from an article in the archives of Typophile. This article definitely opened my eyes about type and I believe it’s a place where we should “live” as students; trying to perfect the greatest fonts ever made and not be shackled by the infamous HELVETICA.

20 Typefaces Is Perfect

Heres a quote from a design teacher in the original discussion:

“I think 20 type faces is perfect. This is what I tell my class to begin with. The idea that you need hundreds of typefaces is ridiculous. When I was in school I had thousands upon thousands of bad typefaces. I hoarded anything I could get. This only helped confuse me when it came to choosing an appropriate face. It was a breath of fresh air to just delete them all off my hard drive. I only use about 10 or so at any moment in my career. Type can be tricky and hard to deal with. It is best to have fewer faces and understand the ins and outs of each one. This is the only way one can expect to master a typeface and type in general.” - Jay Wilkinson

Honestly, I have over 2000 fonts and the truth is they almost never get the job done. Mainly because they are free amateur fonts, which some guy somewhere thought “looked cool” and I quickly came to realize that they are virtually useless. I always seem to find myself empty handed after I’ve scrolled down to my very last one then I go back to my safe zone with HELVETICA or FUTURA.

Don’t Use Free Fonts

This is something I should have read awhile ago, a quote from Keith Tam:

“I don’t feel comfortable with the idea of students downloading free fonts off the ‘net for their projects. More often than not they end up using something poorly made without even realizing that it is not a ‘professional quality’ font. It’s dangerous. It’s such a bad influence for them because they’ll end up thinking that fonts are free and anyone can make fonts. Not a good idea. I think it’s a typography instructor’s duty to teach their students how to discern the differences between well and poorly made typefaces, and about the legalities of typeface licensing.”

The 20

As Jacob Cass one could argue whether 20 is a suitable number or not, however, I believe it is a good starting point …and here they are:

Centaur
Jenson
Bembo
(Adobe) Garamond
Minion
Times New Roman
Baskerville
Mrs Eaves
Bauer Bodoni
Didot
Clarendon
Rockwell
Serifa
Franklin Gothic
News Gothic
Helvetica Neue
Univers
Futura
Fruitger
Copperplate Gothic