An Inspiring Collection of Fonts
FontShop sold a typeface collection called “100 Best Fonts” for a limited time in Germany a little while back. The website for this special promotion generously listed the names of all 100 best typefaces for graphic design with background information in German. When the typeface collection was no longer available, the promotional site itself retained a life of its own, serving as a go-to reference for graphic designers looking for inspiration. The PDF on the promotional website is a beautiful piece of design work, a nice visual resource, and just plain fun to look at even if you don’t read German. (NOTE: You can click the typeface names for more info)
How could this great list be improved? I was interested into what categories and classifications these classic fonts were placed, what foundries they were from, and what interesting insights might avail themselves if I could see all the data in one place. I also wanted one place to see examples of all these great typefaces, so I put those together too.
Some of the data was hard to come by, some of it was a little fuzzy, and some of it was guesswork. If you have a correction, suggestion, or insight, please leave a comment below and I’ll update the list accordingly.
How to sort the list of 100 Best Fonts
To sort the list, simply click on a column header. Use the jump list at the right to quickly find a particular font. Click the arrow in the far right column to be taken back to the top. Use the gray arrows to advance or rewind the list one font at a time
And don’t forget to pop over to the homepage at bonfx.com and look for other typography research articles, typography books, and graphic design apps.
BTW: The Big Book of Font Combinations wants you to stop by and check out its samples. So many fonts, so little time...
The 100 Best Fonts (in a huge sortable table)
| Rank | Typeface Name | Date | Type Designer | Category | Classification | Foundry |
|---|
Nice improvement Douglas, thanks for putting together a much more eye pleasing list
Where’s comic sans?
Comic Sans goes in a different list
Nice list. But the sentence is wrong. There is no ‘S’. It should be ‘jumps’ over the lazy dog to make it correct (to have all alphabets).
Wow. Just fixed and reexported all the images
Thanks for the nice catch!
Hey Jacob: If it wasn’t for your article, I’m not sure I would have found the FontShop list. Keep inspiring your legions
i love trajan. I Think Sabon is diversification from Trajan Pro. But Sabon is best to
no comments or suggestions really – just a thank you!
nice list.
? i didn’t know that the oldness of baskerville.
? at start i thought one of my favorite georgia will also appear in this list. finally it was not there.
still i ? it.
Really appreciate your effort making this easy for most of the designers to get the best fonts from the rack. Got few more fonts that I prefer personally but didn’t find in here, could be proposed if the table accommodates more than 100 fonts
But truly, love the collection (@Fontshop), Douglas. Cheers !!
“The website […] listed the names of all 100 typefaces—but nothing more”
Well, 100besteschriften.de is in German only, but have you ever tried clicking the names? There is actually a wee bit more to discover than just the names.
@ Florian: Goodness, I’ve been to that page many times and didn’t know it was clickable. And I’m a full time web-developer! Wow! To non-German passersby there isn’t much indication that there is more to explore!
I even wrote to FontShop.de about the collection in January and they replied that “…the list that you see on FontFont.de is just free publication that FontShop Germany created”. I assumed that meant the PDF! I just noticed now that you can leave comments, it seems, about each entry. But most of them are blank or have 1 or 2 comments only, and they are in mainly German. What a great idea that escaped most users…What does the German in the top left corner translate into? I wonder if it says “click me…”
@ Florian: text has been updated. Thanks!
Just added auto scrolling for each item, no matter how you sort it. Look for the little gray arrows on the far right. Gotta love jQuery.
very nice fonts
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@ Almekhlafi: nice ascii art
Beautiful list, thanks for posting!
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great overview! thanks for putting this together.
Thanks Daniel. It was a labor of love
What about Meta? Not my favorite typeface but better definitely in the top 100
Meta is in there
GIve a second look 
Must have tripped on the feet of Walbaum and right over Meta
interesting list …
very good
this is my first time visiting your blog. Being a typography fan make me fall in love with your blog..Keep them coming man!
I’ve got more in the pipeline
Thanks!
OMG i cant find comic sans O_o
yay! My favourite font, Baskerville, is on the list!
a very thank you very much for the sortable list..
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1. At LEAST you had Copperplate Gothic on this list as one of the top fonts of all time.
2. Clearly it was an omission that Copperplate Gothic Bold was not at the top of the list. Helvetica? Really?
3. Comic Sans is a joke, we all know that isn’t a real font.
Helvetica is number one, playing it by the numbers! Can’t argue with that!
Useful list and good to know about which fonts are mostly used by professionals. Thanks
[...] looking out for font, not every existing one has to be tested. At http://bonfx.com/the-100-best-fonts-in-a-huge-sortable-table/ you will find a listing of the hundred most used fonts – and they are not used that often for no [...]
You should use “t” instead of “T” in the second line. Nice collection. Very much appreciated
@ tcgplayer: on the “t”, you are absolutely right! I’ll fix that in a revision at some point. thanks for catching that!
Wonderful list, thank you. But you had Proforma listed as a sans serif and Copperplate Gothic as a sans serif, and by the looks of them, they both have serifs.
Hi Catherine: Proforma was a mistake. Thanks! Copperplate is a little less clear. Gothic means sans-serif, and while it has serifs, they are functionally almost negligible. However, I’m going to list it as a serif now. Thanks for your help!
@ tcgplayer
I have exported the graphics again with the “T” set to a “t”, so that the second line is all lower case.
And now, off to work on the top 100 free fonts version of this list!
English version of the official website by FontShop: http://www.100besttypefaces.com/
Nice! I’ll point to the English site in the intro copy at the top.
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Obviously whoever compiled this list has never seen Sansation.
The list is compiled from sales and usage stats from FontShop. There are many reasons a typeface would not be on this. More recent fonts wouldn’t have had time to gather enough steam to make to a list like this. Sansation is fairly new.
Very nice list! Thank you!