100 Best Fonts

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 typefaces—but nothing more. 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 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.

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.

What did you find that was interesting? Happy best-font-sorting!

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.

The 100 Best Fonts (in a nice sortable table)