Top 20 Web Fonts

Now is the time to improve the design of your work with web fonts.

Without exaggeration, now typography is going through an exciting period of its life. Recent technological leaps have brought us one step closer to typographical nirvana on the Internet. The step that everyone has been waiting for.

Freedom to use web fonts outside the safe list on all major operating systems became possible, by and large, thanks to three main, almost simultaneous technological factors: widespread support for the @ font-face rule in browsers; the emergence of such "font store" as Typekit and Fontdeck ; creating a new font format - an archived WOFF font file.

Translation sponsor: Aiken Studio *

But as they say, with more power, we have an even greater responsibility. Therefore, the possibility of choosing a variety of fonts from an extensive library does not always mean the need to make this very choice; the same can be said about drawing in a limited color palette. In addition, there are many alternative fonts, most of which are free, so they are widely used by the masses and are popular rather unfairly.
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In fact, all this is part of a much bigger problem. There is an opinion in the network (especially in the design communities) that it is not worth paying for fonts. This opinion is erroneous. Because, as a result, it damages both individual talented designers all over the world, and the design community as a whole.

To create a font, like any other form of design, the designer uses all his many years of experience and talent, and this occupation takes a lot of time. The advantages of a professionally designed font include such features as: the choice of font style and font style (helps to group a full-fledged font family), neatly selected kernings, support for several languages ​​with international characters, expressive glyphs and various letter settings. All this is very rare in free versions of fonts.



For this reason, almost every one of the twenty fonts below has its own paid version. Also presented are free versions of the so-called Typekit “font store”.

Add that we focused exclusively on the fonts that are regularly used on the network. So turn over on your back and discover the 20 fonts that you will definitely want to use again and again ...

20. Avenir

Family: Sans serif
Designer: Adrian Frutiger
Download or buy: Fonts.com
The design of Avenir is based on the omnipresent Futura font (which was conceived as “Die Schrift für die Neue Zeit” - “Font of the New Age”). However, according to designer Adrian Frutiger, the Avenir font contains much more humanity. Despite its popularity in corporate circles, its rounded geometric shapes and subtle personality will give a friendly smile to even the most serious content.
A few years later, Akira Kobayashi completed Avenir Next, a font that became an improved version of the original (italics and capitals were added to the new version.)

19. FF Kava

Family: Sans serif
Designer: Yanone Kaffeesatz
Download or buy: FontShop
The free version of the font was published at a time when browser support for the @ font-face rule was widespread, and this has earned its popularity among designers. As a result, the young German designer Janon came to the attention of one of the world's largest manufacturers of digital fonts - the company FontShop FSI, which later led to the birth of the professional version of this font.

18. Times New Roman

Family: Serif ( system font )

Designer: Victor Lardent, Stanley Morison
Anyone who creates lists of our kind will not forget about this font. Probably the most common font. Designed by designers Stanley Morrison and Victor Lardent.

17. Bree

Family: Sans serif
Designer: José Scaglione, Veronika Burian
Download or buy: Typekit , Fontdeck
Full of personality, arrogant and sloppy, the Bree font may seem suitable only for headings, since We first saw it on the TypeTogether logo. However, practice shows that Bree looks pretty elegant and in its smaller size.
Bree is one of the few fonts that were born as a result of the collective work of two people: Jose Scaglione and Veronica Burian, students of the faculty of Printing Design at the British University Reading. Which, in turn, is considered one of the best educational institutions in the world, preparing talented printing designers.

16. FF Trixie

Family: Typewriter
Designer: Erik van Blokland
Download or buy: FontShop
Trixie is one of the first typewriter fonts. It will become indispensable in writing headlines for sad events (accidents, natural disasters, etc.). The author managed to convey the aesthetics of typing, which can surely be called an achievement.

15. Centro Sans pro

Family: Serif
Designer: Panos Vassiliou
Download or buy: Fontdeck
A large number of super-families allows designers to create mixed types of fonts where the serif is interwoven with sans serif. This is done to improve the readability and appearance of the letters at the same time. Font Centro Sans pro and is one of the representatives of such super-families.

14. Fedra Sans

Family: Sans serif
Designer: Peter Bil'ak)
Download or buy: Typotheque
Another representative of the super-families, who began his career as the corporate font of the German insurance company Bayerische Rück. Designed in the Typotheque font library with the goal of serving people in a proper way, both on the screen and on paper.
It is worth noting that this project was suspended and started several times: the customer decides to cancel it, then hesitates, and then completely steals equipment from the developer’s office. But thanks to designer Peter Bilak, he managed to not only complete, but also significantly improve the project. As a result, it turned out in many ways a universal font.

13. Museo Slab

Family: Slab serif
Designer: Jos Buivenga
Download or buy: Typekit , Fontdeck , Font Squirrel
The original version of Museo is extremely popular among designers and is half free. The font belongs to the opentype format. It has support for a large number of languages.

12. Clarendon URW

Family: Slab serif
Designer: Robert Besle, Hermann Eidenbenz
Download or buy: Typekit , Fontdeck , Font Squirrel
The classic British serif font (slab serif), without which no such list will do. Refined by Hermann Aidenbenz, it includes several types of density and tracings.

11. Proxima Nova

Family: Sans serif
Designer: Mark Simonson
Download or buy: Typekit , Fontdeck
An incredibly flexible and readable font, an improved version of Proxima Sans, is used in a variety of scripts. It has many styles, which increases the number of fonts of this family to forty-two.

10. FF Unit Slab

Family: Slab serif
Designer: Erik Spiekermann, Christian Schwartz, Chris Sowersby
Download or buy: FontShop
The font managed to be loved by many, not excluding me. Can produce a fundamentally opposing impression on the user in their various densities. Which makes it in some way unique font.

09. Calluna

Family: Serif
Designer: Jos Buivenga
Download or buy: Typekit , Fontdeck , Font Squirrel
He came to light as an experiment on the early version of Museo Slab and Calluna and became the first serious font in the career of designer Jos Buiwenga.
Like other fonts of Jos, it is endowed with many properties of the Opentype format and has a free version available to users.

08. Ronnia Condensed

Family: Sans Serif
Designer: José Scaglione, Veronika Burian
Download or buy: Typekit
The most appropriate word to describe it is universality. Looks best in headlines. It is used for various purposes, so you can see it both in the news headlines and in corporate reports of enterprises.

07. Droid Sans

Family: Sans Serif
Designer: Steve Matteson
Download or buy: Typekit , FontsLive , Webtype
The Droid font family was designed by designer Steve Matteson in the fall of 2006. The main task of the designer was to create a readable and high-quality font, primarily for mobile phones. Later, the fonts of this family were optimized for use in the menu of various software, browsers, etc.

06. FF Tisa

Family: Serif
Designer: Mitja Miklavcic
Mitya Maklavchich created a font to meet the technological and aesthetic requirements of modern magazines. He set a goal to develop a softer and more dynamic version of the font. Due to the low contrast of its outlines, Tisa is perfectly readable even in the smallest sizes, whether it is on the pages of books, or printed by a low-resolution laser printer.

05. FF DIN

Family: Sans serif
Designer: Albert-Jan Pool
Download or buy: Typekit , FontShop
Modern font designed by a Dutch designer. The abbreviation "DIN", in German, means "German Institute for Standardization". It was originally used as text on road signs and apartment numbers. But over the years, its purely business geometric forms have been decorating German web design. In 1995, it was updated by Albert-Jan Poole, the update included more stylistic options, as well as the new DIN Rounded format.

04. Helvetica

Family: Sans Serif
Designer: Max Miedinger, Eduard Hoffmann
Download or buy: Fonts.com
It seems impossible to discuss the subject matter of a printing house without mentioning Helvetica. The font has earned the status of a legend due to the fact that almost every designer in the world uses it. His name and style are known to the public.
Helvetica was designed to compete with the Akzidenz-Grotesk font, and its original name was Die Neue Haas Grotesk. The font personifies the Swiss style of graphic design from the distant 1950s. But its widespread use in all forms of design led to the fact that it “became boring” to some extent, therefore several more of its subforms, such as Arial, were developed. However, it remains a modern classic.

03. Alternate Gothic No.1

Family: Sans serif
Designer: Morris Fuller Benton
Download or buy: Fontdeck
Fantastic font for writing headlines. Alternate Gothic and its variants remain an extremely popular choice for those who need an impartial, almost impudent font. Clear at relatively small sizes. Being a part of American industrialism, it looks great in the digital age.
He became extremely popular after the design studio “The League of Moveable Type” created its updated version with open source.

02. FF Meta Serif

Family: Serif
Designer: Christian Schwartz, Erik Spiekermann, Kris Sowersby
Download or buy: Typekit , FontShop
Eric Spikerman describes his Meta family as “close to the classics,” and at the same time frankly modest, because the Meta font really is a classic, especially the sans serif version. This is an authoritative font that works great with various scenarios.

01. Georgia

Family: Serif
Designer: Matthew Carter
Download or buy: Typekit , FontShop
What? System font at the top of the ranking? No matter how hard it is to believe - Georgia is the favorite of people working on the network. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that it was designed more for the “screen” than for printing, and perhaps because it managed to embody the infinite beauty and clarity due to its simplicity.
Extremely clear at small sizes and majestic in its italic variant, Georgia confirms its value, despite the abundance of alternatives, and reminds that sometimes, the best tools are right under our noses.

This compilation was first published in the .net Issue 208

* Few of these fonts are for Cyrillic, so this selection is more suitable for “outsourcers”. Let's hope that soon there will be at least some of these and not only fonts for Slavic languages ​​in Cyrillic.

PS For whom only Cyrillic web fonts are interesting, look here at this collection: lyncis.info/en/post/274