30 Awesome Fonts that all designers must know and should own
Here are the thirty must have fonts to shoot your design into the stratosphere. They are organized in alphabetical order and fall into two categories: serif and sans-serif. Some of these come with various design programs, some are available free on various websites and some, alas, coast money. Under each font we ‘ll give a list as to what they are normally used for. Note, this is not all they are used for. Get creative! That is, after all, the point of graphic design.
1. Adobe Caslon
Used for magazines, journals, text books, and corporate communication. You know, mostly everything.
2. Adobe Garamond
Used primary for textbooks and magazines.
3. Bembo
Used for posters, packaging and textbooks.
4. Bodoni
Used for headlines, logos and various text. You may recognize it from your favorite newspaper.
5. Clarendon
Used primarily for dictionaries and headlines.
6. Courier
Used for tabular materials, technical documentation, word processing. It’s the “high brow” font.
7. Excelsior
Used primarly for newsletters, reports and proposals. How to succeed in the business world, indeed.
8. Lucida
This is the perfect font for low resolution printing, small point sizes and reversed out half tones.
9. Minion
Used for books, newsletters and packaging. Also has a scary name.
10. Perpetua
Used primarily for displays with fine lettering, long pages of text, and chiseled text. Hit the gym, text.
11. Sabon
Used in books and corporate communication. Very classy.
12. Stempel Schneidler
Used primarily for displays and fine publications that need a legible text type. Unlike my handwriting.
13. Times New Roman
Ah, the infamous Times New Roman. Used for newspapers, magazines, and every college paper ever made.
14. Trajan
Used for books, magazines, posters, billboards, and anything to do with religion.
15. Walbaum
Used primarily for magazines, journals, text books, corporate communication.
1. Akzidenz Grotesk
Used primarly in print media and for large signage.
2. Avenir
Used primarily in books that feature lots and lots of text. It’s easy to read.
3. Bell Centennial
This font is primarily used in situations that feature poor printing conditions.
4. Bell Gothic
Used in situations that call for small amounts of text that contain large amounts of information.
5. DIN
Used in signage, posters and displays.
6. Franklin Gothic
Used primarly in newspapers and all areas where space is of the essence.
7. Frutiger
This is an all purpose font for print media. It’s classy and versatile.
8. Futura
Used in large displays and also in small text in books. Wow!
9. Gill Sans
This is not a dude’s name, rather it’s a font that is used as an all purpose font for print media.
10. Helvetica
This is the one and only Helvetica, an all purpose font used just about everywhere in just about every format imaginable.
11. Meta
Used primarily with numbers, other forms of text and corporate communication. How meta!
12. Myriad
Used for a “myriad” of purposes, including large displays and just about everything else in media.
13. Trade Gothic
You may recognize this font from the classified ads. It’s also used in all forms of advertising.
14. Univers
Used in packaging, signage and text books.
15. Vag Rounded
Used primarily in instruction manuals and print advertising.
Well. That’s it! If you wanna buy the fonts above we would recommend MyFonts or ITC Fonts however, as your mama no doubt told you, you gotta shop around!
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