BonFX

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. Enjoy, and leave a comment! … [Read More]

If you do a google search for “what fonts go with…”, you’ll see Futura, Century Gothic, Bebas, and a few other suggestions pop up in the auto-suggest tool. Century Gothic is a geometric sans-serif — one of the many types of fonts designers reach for when they need something clean and modern. We just did a post on fonts that look great with Futura, and now we are continuing on to Century Gothic. Century Gothic is similar in some fundamental ways to Futura, but has some very unique differences that clearly set it apart. For instance, notice how the terminals of the letter “C” (and other letters) differ from each other in this illustration (which I reconstructed from an uncredited source on Pinterest): The perpendicular cut of Futura seems to make it feel more “serious”, where Century Gothic feels a bit less formal. If you compare Century Gothic and Futura in a variety of settings, you’ll see that to a large degree they can be used interchangeably. So, let’s see what fonts work with Century Gothic, pulling from a list of classic typefaces we keep handy, and see what kind of look and feel we can get going. … [Read More]

It’s back to the future with Futura and the well time-travelled question of what other typefaces go with it! As with any typeface with a lot of personality like Futura — a geometric sans-serif that’s earned a spot on every best fonts list — you have to choose what to pair it with carefully. No matter what typeface you are trying to match, you have to repeat that golden rule to yourself. So let’s get right to it. I’ll toss out some suggestions and a few words about each font. As usual, we are going to stick with the most popular classic typefaces and not venture off into the world of random free fonts. … [Read More]