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Every designer faces the challenge of choosing typefaces that work well together. Do they evoke the same mood and/or time period? Will they sit on the same page without conflict? Do their proportions match? It’s a challenge we addressed earlier with our feature on sans/serif families. There are many typefaces with sans and serif pairs, but some projects require more. Corporate identities and publications need a font palette suitable for a wide range of content – from captions to headlines, long text to info graphics and tables. For this kind of work, every studio should have in its typographic arsenal at least one solid type system – a broad set of fonts designed to work together as a whole. |
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Families that have members from multiple type categories (such as sans, serif, and slab) that are all based on the same underlying form, a suite is a versatile solution for a magazine, corporate brochure, or annual report where there are many different kinds of texts, each requiring its own treatment. You wouldn’t use the same font to set both introductory prose and tables of sales figures. With a suite, you can use different fonts in the same document but still speak with the same voice.
Font suites: |
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TheSans from the LucasFonts printed catalog. |
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TheSans is the new face of Sprint. |
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German broadcasting organization Das Erste makes use of the Thesis family for their logo (TheAntiqua) and website (TheSans). |
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Thesis Luc(as) de Groot’s expansive masterpiece spreads out over more than 150 fonts and three main styles: a sans serif (TheSans), a slab (TheSerif), and a text serif (TheAntiqua) with many more weights than traditional book faces. There are even myriad monospaced versions of Thesis to choose from. A groundbreaking modern sans serif, TheSans is the most popular member of the family, serving as an identity and workhorse typeface for many companies, including the recently rebranded Sprint Nextel. TheSans is available in a package with oldstyle figures and small caps (TheSans Classic), or a smaller bundle with lining figures (TheSans Basic). |
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FF Nexus Serif adorns the jacket of “Great Lives” and “The Collins New Naturalist”, designed by Mark Thomson in 2005. |
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Jan Willem den Hartog made full use of the FF Nexus family for a series of concert posters. |
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FF Nexus’s optional swashes turn a fairly serious text face into an ostentatious charmer. |
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The three versions of FF Nexus (serif, sans, and mix) share the same form principle. |
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FF Nexus Several years after the success of his FF Scala™ family, Martin Majoor set out to create something based on a three typefaces, one form principle. In FF Nexus, a serif, slab, and sans are derived from a single design concept. The monospaced FF Nexus Typewriter plays well with the others, too. This breadth of options, combined with OpenType features (such as built-in small caps, figure sets, and optional swashes) make FF Nexus an extremely versatile type system. |
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These days, a single typeface is asked to do a lot, from setting the body of a story, to packing tight sidebar copy. Fortunately, there are now many families that offer a broad range of weights and widths. With these sets, there’s a font for every job. Font families with a large range of weights and widths: |
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John Seymour-Anderson employed various fonts from Proxima Nova for his work with the Minnesota Environmental Partnership. |
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Proxima Nova’s heaviest weight helped OVO create a strong brand for voice over artist Chris Turbiville. |
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What’s On TV magazine of the UK is filled with Proxima Nova. Even the tiniest listings are eminently readable. |
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Straddling the gap between geometrics (Futura) and grotesques (Helvetica) and weighing in at 42 fonts, Proxima Nova is one of the most versatile sans serif families available. The coverage of each individual OpenType font is impressive on its own. Each features small caps, lining and old style figures, fractions, dingbats, and extended language support. Also included: useful alternate glyphs that do so much to change the nature of the design, it’s almost like you have several typefaces in one. |
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Before the advent of scalable fonts, each typeface was crafted at a specific size. Small type was made rugged and wide to keep letters legible. Large titling faces were given more detail and line contrast. Then film type came along, and people resized their fonts all willy-nilly, resulting in text type that was too thin and headlines without elegance. Thankfully, the trend is shifting back to the original idea that fonts should be drawn with a size in mind. Font families with size-specific cuts: |
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FF Meta’s light weights lend elegance to Aveda cosmetics. |
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One of the many typographic illustrations from “Made with FontFont” |
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Erik Spiekermann noticed that his ultra-popular FF Meta was being used at sizes much larger than he intended. So, with the help of Christian Schwartz and Joshua Darden, he released FF Meta Headline. The OpenType version of this new, more compact Meta features several alternate characters without tails to allow for tighter headlines. |
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The articles of How Magazine were set in ITC Bodoni for many years and proved that ITC Bodoni Twelve is the best digital Bodoni for text. |
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An excerpt from Sumner Stone’s specimen showcases his team’s work on the delicate Bodoni swashes. |
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The result of painstaking research, ITC Bodoni is perhaps the most faithful digitization of Bodoni. It features the size-specific designs of the original metal type, including ITC Bodoni Six, a weight specifically designed for small captions and settings, ITC Bodoni Twelve, a version specifically for text setting, and ITC Bodoni Seventy-Two, a display design patterned after Bodoni’s 72-point “Papale” font. The largest variation also includes two swash fonts for the italics. |
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... Font used in title graphic: FF Meta®. Font used in subheads and tables: FF Unit™. If you or a friend would like to receive FontShop news, including notices of free font downloads, send mail to news@fontshop.com. It’s never our intention to send unwanted email. If you’re receiving duplicates or would prefer not to receive FontShop news, simply let us know. Thanks for helping us keep our list lean. © 2007, FSI FontShop International |