Ask HN: What's a Good Professional Font You Use? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's a Good Professional Font You Use?

6 pointskeltecp1117 comments

I'm putting my resume together... any suggestions?

If you are on Windows, new "C" fonts (bundled with Office 2007 or Vista) are nice and fresh (compared to older classics that are everywhere).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambria_(typeface)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibri

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candara

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantia_(typeface)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbel_(typeface)

I found this to be a good guide to the design of a resume:

http://www.lifeclever.com/give-your-resume-a-face-lift/

It discusses fonts, layout with a good eye for design.

Use a serif font for headings and a sans font for text. For code blocks or anything requiring monospace be sure it clearly defines characters (like profont) such as 0.

You can go all Sans-Serif or all Serif but it won't be the same as combining the two. Going Sans-Serif for headlines and Serif for text kind of works but you have a narrower range of choices.

We use a Serif font for headlines and a Sans-Serif for body text, freeing us up to use the Sans-Serif font exclusively in certain situations for headlines where needed, and the Serif font for bolder statements.

Whatever font the LaTeX resume template uses..

http://www.rpi.edu/dept/arc/training/latex/resumes/

They use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Modern and can optionally use Helvetica or New Century Schoolbook.

I use Georgia and I have used Bookman at times. They are both reasonably open styles and look good on both a screen and paper. The old standard is Times New Roman, but Times was designed for legibility while cramming as much text into a newspaper column as possible. I think it looks cramped.

i like georgia and verdana -- shouldn't have any issues if you end up having to send something as a .doc, and they're good basic-but-not-too-common fonts. use one for headings and the other for body, either way works.

These have been my preferred resume fonts as well, but my upvote was for the key point you make about issues at the other end. Especially with a resume, you don't want the fonts to not exist on the recipient's machine because a lot of formatting will be lost (and your text may be replaced by Courier New - aagh).

I've worked with a few companies now that have used specialist fonts for marketing; it's fine in pdf form but most documents end up being Arial or Verdana anyway to be safe.

yeah, i considered mentioning what fonts i'd use in the case of converting to pdf, but doc is such an HR standard. i've had bigger tech companies ask me to send doc after first passing along a pdf.

Both great choices. I'm not really a fan of using them together though.

i definitely like both of them, and i also definitely am not very artistically inclined. i'll cede to a higher authority on whether they work together or not.

A resume you plan to print or one you intend to be read on a screen?

I really do prefer a good serif font for printing and sans-serif for things intended to be read online.

Helvetica

I use Georgia on my resume with a minimalist layout and receive compliments on it often.

I would use Helvetica Neue but I am not sure whether this font is available on Windows.

The Serif, Avenir, Black Slabbath

Wingdings.

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