Tag Archives: fonts

My 10 Favorite Fonts of 2011

Feb 20, 2012

It’s that time of year again, when we look back at some of our favorite fonts to emerge during 2011. This year’s top ten list (in no particular order, by the way), includes some stylized fonts, some hand-drawn and script fonts, and some lovely sans serifs. Click on the pictures to go to any font’s display page on MyFonts.com.

Pluto

Pluto font

Pluto is one of those fonts that had immediate appeal to designers, and spent a lot of time in the top-fonts list over at MyFonts.com. Its friendly curves and solid design make it great for all kinds of applications, from light and humorous to serious and professional. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it popping up in lots of print and web pieces over the next couple of years.

Reverie

Reverie font

A font that could be a cousin to Pluto, Reverie is fun and friendly, and lends itself to a variety of uses, including logos, headlines, and even short runs of text. Some fonts sit on my harddrive for months before I use them; Reverie saw action almost immediately after I bought a license.

Carolyna Black

Carolyna Black font

Carolyna Black is a lovely and unusual script font. It’s a rare script that retains the flavor of being hand-drawn while also being precisely crafted to work flawlessly in professional usage.

Waldemar

Waldemar font

Waldemar is a big, bold font with plenty of flair. It works great for headlines and packaging, and has a wonderful friendly touch while being strong.

Transitore

Transitore font

Just when you thought grunge fonts were passé, along comes Transitore. It’s a fun, hand-drawn font, with a great complement of ligatures and contextual alternates, so that it actually looks hand-drawn in use.

Feel Script

Feel Script font

Everybody’s favorite script foundry, Sudtipos, came out with some beautiful fonts in 2011, but this is my favorite. Feel Script is a wonderful, upright calligraphic font, complete with a professional set of glyphs including alternates, ligatures, and ending forms.

Filmotype Giant

Filmotype Giant font

Who doesn’t love a good tall, condensed font? Filmotype Giant is great for headlines, posters, and ads… Anything that would benefit from a bold font that fits a lot into a little space.

Elemental Sans

Elemental Sans font

I’m usually not wooed by humanist sans serif fonts, but Elemental Sans won me over. It’s a unique sans that will look legible and professional while retaining some character.

Calluna Sans

Calluna Sans font

From Jos Buivenga comes a sibling to his popular Calluna serif font: Calluna Sans. It’s another humanist font that melts my anti-humanist bias. The font works beautifully at all sizes and in many applications. A real workhorse that also happens to be a show-horse.

Gibson

Gibson font

Ah, a more geometric sans to fit my sans serif biases! Gibson is a great piece of work, and is, like Calluna Sans, utilitarian while also retaining its own character.

Clip to Evernote

Free Font Roundup

Dec 22, 2011

Every so often I surf over to MyFonts.com and do an advanced search (they have nice search tools on their site!) for free fonts. (The search string winds up being http://new.myfonts.com/search/lowest_price%3A0/fonts/ if you feel like bookmarking it.) And I found some great ones this time around.

Some font designers are just flat-out generous and give away their hard work for nothing; others are a combination of generous and savvy, and give away one or two fonts in a larger font family, in the hopes that you’ll like it so much that you’ll buy the whole thing some day. In any event, if you’re a designer short on budget, you can still create some beautiful typographic designs without spending a penny.

As an experiment, I downloaded a bunch of free fonts from MyFonts.com and set to work creating a design using nothing but them. (Even the border and background are made from free fonts.)

free fonts in use

Here are the fonts I used:

Free Fonts

Happy designing!

Clip to Evernote