Ask HN: Show me some most beautiful fonts | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Show me some most beautiful fonts

42 pointsdeccanchargers40 comments

Serif, Sans Serif or Mono , Show me some most beautiful fonts that are unique.

Open Source or Free fonts are appreciated.

View on HN

This one is quite well-known already, but I think Univers is beautiful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers

Apparently, Frutiger said that "Helvetica is the jeans, and Univers the dinner jacket." I think that's appropriate.

I'm also fond of FF Scala and FF Scala Sans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FF_Scala

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FF_Scala_Sans

Sadly, these are not open source. But they all have a relatively large number of glyphs.

If you want something open-source and with a ̶H̶U̶U̶U̶G̶E̶ largish number of glyphs, here is Junicode: https://github.com/psb1558/Junicode-New

Of the three, my favorites:

* Serif: Bitter (https://www.huertatipografica.com/en/fonts/bitter-ht) or maybe Vollkorn (http://vollkorn-typeface.com)

* Mono: Iosevka

* Sans-serif: maybe Fira Sans Condensed, previously perhaps DTL Prokyon.

I haven't seen any sans-serif fonts I've really loved in recent memory. I feel like most sans-serifs just influence from Helvetica and are really boring, lack character or creativity. I'd love to see if anyone here has any examples of novel or interesting sans serifs.

(I also know that good typography doesn't distract from the content, but even under that ideal I still find most modern sans serifs boring).

Love Iosevka. I switched from Source Code Pro to Iosevka, I used in vim and vscode.

Perhaps it's only because of Knuth's books, but I've always liked the fonts in the Computer Modern series.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Modern

Note that the plain serif font in Computer Modern is a beautiful font for high resolution screens or printing, but has thin serifs not as suitable for low resolution at small font sizes.

Gentium is an open and free font with amazing quality and character coverage: https://software.sil.org/gentium/

Deja Vu is also open, and pretty nice for screen usage.

As for non-free fonts, I love Gill Sans.

The Fira family - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fira_(typeface) - https://github.com/mozilla/Fira

To a lesser extent IBM Plex - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Plex

And a genuine classic in the the Eurostile family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurostile

My all-time favorite is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bembo

Look at that gorgeous capital R!

I personally really like Bespoke Slab

https://www.fontshare.com/fonts/bespoke-slab

https://beautifulwebtype.com/

I’ll take the liberty to expand on my previous answer:

I’m a sucker for classic typefaces. E.g. Garamond, Goudy Old Style, New Century Schoolbook. My favourite sans-serif is Helvetica.

Miller by Carter et al is a nice serif that’s a little more recent.

Publico looks good for headings.

Two nice open source typefaces are Noto Serif and PT Serif.

One of my favourite, Zemestro

http://www.identifont.com/similar?6WX

I like Lemon/Milk too

https://www.dafont.com/lemon-milk.font

And I'm an absolute fan of Futura

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futura_(typeface)

The mix of Lemon Milk and Futura is awesome

I agree with Futura. I used Futura PT on my last set of business / calling cards and combined with the printing effects used the result is incredibly striking.

Most definitely not free but gorgeous: Athelas https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/athelas

Scala and Scala Sans already mentioned upthread

Quadraat Sans: https://www.typeby.com/fonts/quadraat-sans

Not open source or free but I find PragmataPro [0] to be absolutely gorgeous. Iosevka comes close but I don't think it'll ever be able to bridge the gap for me.

[0] https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/

I also recommend iosevka as a great free font for development work with many available variations.

https://typeof.net/Iosevka/

Wow that font is excellent.

Honestly I've never thought to buy a font unless I was using it for web or print... but I may have to buy that just for myself.

What makes you like Pragmata Pro better? Do you think it's almost $250 dollars better than Iosevka?

Great fonts bring me a lot of joy, but Pragmata Pro always felt fairly ridiculously priced to me. I know the author put a lot of time into it, but 99% of the font's features are irrelevant to me (I'll never use Hebrew, for instance, or even the non-mono version of the font).

Essential PragmataPro has a reduced character set for €19. I do think it's $250 dollars better than Iosevka. What convinced me is manual hinting.

JetBrains Mono: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono

Louie Mantia, Jr. has some amazing fonts[1].

[1] http://louie.world/fonts/

The Source family by Adobe is my favorite. It's one of the seemingly few open source Adobe fonts available: https://github.com/adobe-fonts

Source Code Pro (mono) in particular is my day-to-day workhorse, but I also use Source Sans. Not a huge fan of Serif fonts truthfully.

Iosevka family comes in a close second.

There are some listed here - https://computecuter.com/

What a lovely site :)

The Inter font: https://rsms.me/inter/

Since 2017 I have used the Go (Golang) Monospace TrueType fonts:

https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts

They are clear, unambiguous, and pleasing to the eye!

Nice. Reminds me of fonts that used to be available in the X Window System.

One of my favorite serif font is Lyon Text: https://commercialtype.com/catalog/lyon_text

I’m a huge fan of Monaco and install it on all my Linux machines.

https://github.com/todylu/monaco.ttf

Any recommendations on bitmap fonts? I'm stuck with a crappy 1600x900 screen and the only fonts that doesn't look like garbage are fixed-width fonts like Terminus and Peep.

I'm a huge fan of Cozette [0] which is based on Dina which is based on Proggy - which both are good alternatives. I particularly like Cozette's goal of being a Bitmap Alternative to Nerd Fonts [1] as it lets me use it in a lot of places where icon glyphs are desired.

[0] https://github.com/slavfox/Cozette

[1] https://www.nerdfonts.com/

I’ve been using tewi for almost a decade now:

https://github.com/lucy/tewi-font

Not an expert or anything but I'm partial to Cormorant

Dank Mono: https://gumroad.com/l/dank-mono

For serif, I want fonts to be fancy and elegant and I'm in love with Charter/Charis in that regard, and I also really like Computer Modern fonts - but that might be just nostalgia.

For sans-serif, I want fonts to be playful and cute and fun - and Fira Sans is exactly that.

For monospace fonts, I just use Iosevka and Source Code Pro, because they are pretty in my eyes and most of all get the job done.

Source Serif Pro is my Google Docs workhorse .

For sans fonts I have always enjoyed Avenir.

Lisa, MonoLisa

Terminus

Nothing comes close.

SF Mono!

Cambria.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com