Fancy fonts

Would you like a smarter alternative to Arial and Times New Roman? Do you think these fonts are too ubiquitous and most people seem to use them just because they come as standard?

Times New Roman is one of the world's great fonts, but if you want a really smart and eye-catching serif font that works well for paragraphs then it has to be Gentium. Install this font and be sure to be dazzled at the beauty of your documents.

Arial is an imposter of the once great Helvetica font. It is held in low regard by most professional publishers and typesetters, but its popularity amongst the masses is simply because of Micro$oft's domination, resulting in the font spreading through the world like a virus. There are many better sans serif fonts than Arial but here are two very smart - and quite difficult to find - fonts that will really add a professional touch to your document. The first is News Gothic which is an excellent font for paragraph text. Download it here in normal, bold, italic, and bold italic variants. The second is Bell Centennial. This font is quite unusual in having four different weights for a given point size, which are from largest to smallest: Listing, Name and Number, Sub-Caption, Address. This font is excellent for headings or situations where a compact size is required.

If William Shakespeare is England's national playwright then William Caslon has be England's national fontmaster. Caslon is a classical and timeless serif typeface developed in the early 18th century, and revived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A selection of Caslon typefaces are available including Caslon Old Face and Wyld intended to appear true to the styles used in the 18th century; the early 20th century Caslon 540 and Caslon 3 recreations intended for industrial scale typesetting; and Caslon 224 which was developed in the 1980s as a highly-readable font. Caslon was once such a highly respected typeface that printers would almost always use it if no typeface was otherwise specified.

Chauncey H. Griffith of Mergenthaler Linotype designed five serif typefaces specifically for use in newspapers during the early 20th century. These typefaces later became referred to as Griffith's 'Legibility Group' as they were designed to ensure high legibility text when printed at high speed onto newsprint. American newsprint at the time had different absorbent properties to newsprint used in Europe. This resulted in many of the typefaces commonly used in European newspapers failing to reproduce clearly on American newsprint.

The first typeface in Griffith's 'Legibility Group' was Ionic No. 5 which was released in 1925. Griffith took Lanston’s sturdy 6 point Monotype Ionic 156-J as a starting point for Ionic No. 5, and in five trials produced the first contemporary typeface designed specifically to solve the technical problems posed by stereotyping and high speed printing of newspaper text.

The Excelsior typeface was released in 1931 as the end product of the result of a survey of optometrists regarding optimal legibility.

The Corona typeface, released in 1941, is based on forms of the Ionic type and designed to meet the rigorous requirements of high-speed printing. The font is relatively small, but its narrow widths and large x-height gives an impression of strength and modernity.

None of these magnificent serif typeface are commonly encountered in Europe - and they don't appear to be all that popular in the small scale printing and publishing world either. Perhaps this situation is the result of the typefaces being specifically designed for a purpose where the utilarian quality they possess is no longer relevant, although they are just as visually elegant as they have always been, even with text printed with a laser printer onto glossy paper.

Next time you are looking at using a serif typeface then why not try these three pleasant and eye-catching alternative to the ubiquitous Times New Roman. They are quite tricky to find but the following clones by BitStream are more readily available.

News 701 = Ionic No. 5
News 702 = Excelsior
News 705 = Corona

Any ideas what the squared off typeface similar to what Toshiba uses for its logo is called?

There are several squared off sans-serif typefaces around. One of the most popular is Eurostile and I believe this is the typeface that both Toshiba and Diadora use for their logos. A similar typeface is to Eurostile is Square721 and a condensed width variant is also available. Another squared off sans-serif typeface is Bank Gothic which only has upper case letters.