Our Favorite Typefaces of 2012 | Hacker News Reader

Our Favorite Typefaces of 2012

typographica.org

71 pointsshawndumas21 comments

Some nice type here, some not-so-nice. This site does a better job showcasing some of them than their respective Foundries/gallery pages do (Signalist, Xtreem), which is always something to consider when looking at typefaces. http://fontsinuse.com/ used to be a good resource to see different typefaces in the wild, but now it's pretty watered down with crap. You might still be able to find some gems there though.

Can't stress enough how fantastic the MyFonts email newsletters (http://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/) are if you enjoy being up to speed or collecting inspiration for later use. The FontShop ones (http://www.fontshop.com/blog/newsletters/) are also pretty good.

Hi mnicole, I’m the proprietor of Typographica and Fonts In Use. Glad you like(d) them. On FIU quality: one person’s crap is another’s treasure, so we don’t limit what can be contributed as long as type is clearly present. But if you want to filter your experience to just the best (as selected us) you can click on Blog Only or Staff Picks Only nav at the top right.

Hi Stewf, thanks! That definitely wasn't a dig at your curation/aesthetic - just a reality of the site becoming popular. Didn't even notice the filters you pointed out, so those will definitely help!

One thing I dislike about the custom CSS fonts is that they usually look really rough. For example the Typographica header - in my taste, no matter how beautiful the font is, the rough rendering kills the visual appeal and a common, but smoothly rendered font looks way batter [1]

[1] http://i.imgur.com/U5UObQh.png

Retina displays.

I know they're not common yet, but they will be someday. Designers often use the latest (Apple) hardware, so what looks good on their screens may not look good for everyone else. In some ways I see this as a positive—it helps push the industry forward—like PC game developers who require the latest $800 video cards for the best experience.

Retina is just a marketing term by Apple. They are actually displays with a high DPI. You could call them high DPI displays or high resolution (kinda misleading) displays instead.

Yes, HiDPI, whatever you want to call it, doesn't change my point.

Also, Kleenex is a brand name but if I ask for a kleenex people know what I mean.

Hunh. Does Chrome not use custom CSS fonts? It is falling back to Georgia on both Mac and PC for me (edit: with Ghostery running). Turnip is shown on Safari, Firefox and IE 8... and IE does an even worse job of rendering it ("rendering" is generous).

Edit: woops, the Adobe javascript was getting blocked by Ghostery.

What Browser/OS are you using? I ask because even when zoomed into a ridiculous level the font still looks smooth to me (Chrome+Mac).

I think the root cause may be covered in this SO Question [1] which fixes the problem on many sites by re-ordering font inclusion list so Chrome+Windows picks up the right one.

1 = http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4060607/font-face-anti-al...

Looks pretty good here. OS X 10.7.5, Chrome 25.0.1364.172.

http://i.imgur.com/sNdqQox.png

I win at ugliness: http://i.imgur.com/VFHftsC.png

I was looking for a font for a children's literacy app last week and it was amazingly hard to find one where it was nice and clear with the letters in shapes recognizable to normal handwriting. 'a' without the extended line across the top, 't' with the curve at the bottom and 'g' in plain form without a loopy squiggle were quite hard to find together in a non-italic form. In the end the font I found was Andika [1] which is available under the Open Font License (although I'm not that keen on the 'a' and might attempt to tweak it if I get chance).

Does anybody know of a site that lets you search for fonts by the shapes of particular letters?

[1] http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&...

If you can draw a few characters or if you can find a specimen, you can take a photo of it and run it through WhatTheFont [1].

In the case of your last search, you would've taken a photo of a single-storey 'a', and then WhatTheFont would've provided you with several geometric sans-serifs to choose from. If you're still looking for a nice free font with a single storey 'a', try Aaargh. [2]

You can also use Identifont to search for fonts with a single storey 'a': http://www.identifont.com/identify?12+%20+2F+8E+6X4+53K+8B+6...

[1] http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

[2] http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Aaargh

AG Schoolbook Two BQ?[1] Found by simply looking for fonts similar to Futura.

[1] http://www.identifont.com/list?3+futura+16+M2+1+3R8+2+4B7+2+...

You could use Identifont and just keep picking features you want. Though no guarantee such a font would exist.

Back in the day, I created a font on a Tablet PC using 'My Font Tool for Tablet PC' (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote-help/powertoys-for... -- though download seems broken, you can fish it off of CNET, etc.).

Depending on your i18n requirements, it shouldn't be too hard to whip up a simple English font to match your requirements.

Sassoon Primary

Gill Sans Schoolbook

Bembo Schoolbook

Plantin Schoolbook

http://konigi.com/notebook/typography-children

A website about typography and the text on the top black strip is too small to be readable.

Hi mnazim, I run Typographica.org. I’d love to know what OS and display you’re using so I can get a sense of what you’re seeing.

Well the font size is set to 10px, even with my great eyesight it's annoyingly small.

The problem seems to be that the text is both very small and uses very low-contrast colors (dark brown on black or something?). The almost per-word variation in text color for emphasis also seems to make the text harder to read (given that it's already hovering on the edge of readability).

Given that the text in that bar is mostly noise text, it's not all that important, but it'd be nice if the more useful search box stood out a bit more...

[FF 19.0.2, on Debian]

Reply on news.ycombinator.com