requests for font recommendations get me a little excited

You say you need a sans and a serif for your students one for book work and the other for poster work well you’ve come to just the right person for I’m nothing if not decisive on these matters now let’s see beginning with the sans I really do like Solex though it hasn’t got the small caps and I do like fonts with all the parts but that may be moot for poster work geez is it good however and darn thoughtful of Gunnar to put Licko at the top what a long thread too right gutsy of him I daresay but it is true she keeps advancing the field and deserves more nods than she gets although selling her pottery online was truly sad but then there’s possibly the most underrated sans of them all which is Academia Jesus Christ I just remembered that the Tiro boys have basically shut down shop for awhile but maybe if you beg pitifully they might bend the rules and sell it to you on the QT and oh shit that means their serifs Plantagenet and Manticore are no longer in the running why oh why did I not act on time major regret then there’s Syntax of course and no I don’t mean the Adobe version I mean that CD with the newly-issued small caps and text figures say what is the difference between the cheaper version and that gold edition they sell for about $300 more is it like those gold albums once-upon-a-time that were remastered now Kievit there’s a typeface six weights all the f-ligatures and text figures it may be the most complete sans of them all more to say about this later oh my God Gill Sans why did I not mention this one first and here again you have to be choosy and go with Monotype because there’s text numerals and small caps to consider but Meta is really comprehensive too and just keeps getting bigger but it is rather ubiquitous isn't it which is perhaps a solid argument for Info that’s a beautiful typeface although I’m not crazy about the Info Office stuff they’ve done recently now Jonathan’s unbelievable Knockout who can argue with that for your sans choice one for the ages Gotham too Tobias is a fucking machine emphasis on machine you silly-billy and he’s pretty smart I’d like to hear his music send me some of your tunes Tobias and Scala Sans is timeless high on the omnipresence factor though with a bit more character than most of these Avenir has a little less character but more true grace than almost any sans I know it's just blissful Scene is striking but then you know how I feel about that one Sebastian Lester is about as nice and skilled as they come speaking of skilled Christian Schwartz’s Bau is stunning I remember oh so well seeing Lines & Splines set in it and wondering what the hell it was and good thing Andy had an About section because it told me then and there you know he still uses it on New Series do you care for Quadraat Sans I sure do quirky as all get out and Bringhurst praises it to the heavens in version 2.5 you know he likes Charlotte Sans an awful lot and so do I but have you ever tried to use Charlotte Serif in text I just can’t make it work for me they used to use it on the menu board at Caribou Coffee and I said to the dour barista there oh you changed your typeface on the menu board and he just gave me a funny sort of look and I said yes it used to be in a font called Charlotte Serif which really looked quite good at 200 pt but now you use one called Agency and it does condense real nicely he just asked if I’d like whipped cream on my white chocolate mocha but while I’m thinking Font Bureau I should mention Agenda it’s incomplete too why can’t they issue text numerals but it’s grown bigger recently and has a bit of that Gill Sansiness to it oh is price an issue because Caspari is a thing of beauty but wait before I move on to the serifs I would be entirely remiss if I did not mention the sans of 2002 which you know to be Neutraface can I have that in OpenType format with a pillow and a chair please okay switch gears a good seriffed text face you know who uses Clifford well somebody should I mean optical scaling and the borders and all my goodness someday and that’d better be soon it will get the recognition it deserves along those stylistic lines you’ve got Hoefler Text heck if you’re going to use the text weight you could get the display weight too for the bigger stuff but perhaps I’m getting carried away you know Janson Text fits neatly into that category as well and you could make your own double f-ligatures if you’re fussy and have some time on your hands why does Linotype have so few digitizations with double f-ligatures is it just laziness I’ll have to say I’m underwhelmed by the digitized Monotype serifs Garamond Fournier VanDijck Walbaum they’re just too light on the page but Dante is one exception there’s something funny about the way the small caps work with the rest of the font but I suppose I could get over that did I say optical scaling well then Celeste fits the bill too with that new small text weight but how’d that kerning snafu get into the FontFont 2000 catalog well I just looked and I saw that it was fixed for 2002 and Matthew Carter’s Miller is breathtaking you know I heard he draws right in Fontographer oh I just thought of one more sans Angie Sans darn nice just two hairs away from regular ol’ Angie now is that one a sans or a serif on the fence I suppose I hear they call them hybrids and now that I’m thinking of JFP I demand to know why the hell no one uses Apolline in this country it’s wonderful I’ve worn out his specimen book ogling it do you think he’d send me a new one and Sabon but should you buy Monotype or Linotype or Linotype-Porchez gosh do you think Linotype will ever sell those gold editions at a lower price or will they sell the faces in single weights how long I repeat how long will they hold these fonts hostage okay I’ve calmed down now of course Scala and Quadraat and oh now that Fred’s on my mind once again will Arnhem ever become available is it available now and then if you have the cash there’s Renard full sample in Counterpunch you know Dean Allen called it something like the first fully realized typeface of the PostScript era I think I know what he meant but I’m not completely sure maybe something about that three-dimensionality say if you write to Peter Matthias Noordzij he’ll send you gorgeous samples of all that TEFF stuff and you get Peter’s own handwriting on the big envelope and it’s really nice he actually writes text figures mine’s so shitty by comparison should we petition him to release Romanée and at the other Dutch foundry one of my absolute favorites is Dorian again pricey but may be worth it for the italic alone print those PDFs and dream away baby Fedra Serif I like the B myself but I’ve always been big on generous ascenders I think they’re sexy maybe I should read some of that Steven Heller typoerotica and get it out of my system and did you see Fedra Greek my he publishes a journal runs a downright scholarly website and makes superbly crafted typefaces did the Raelians clone him too hey what do you think of Eidetic Neo Rod designed it in a car darn novel face and that unicase might offer all kinds of possibilities the tragically underused Stone Cycles Sumner still has no website but Gerard Unger does anyhow you can see it in Type 2 Number 1 kind of a wider Stone Print oh yeah Andy already said that wait what do you think of types by The Foundry for some unknown reason I overlook them but Foundry Wilson is especially pretty the Thesis family sure is versatile serif and sans and half-and-half Hi Luc(as) I’m Jon(athon) nice to meet you but now I’m also overlooking the truly ubiquitous that must be my word of the day Adobe Garamond and Caslon and Minion those relatively transparent faces could really challenge the kids to be creative no I don’t mean to be insulting to Robert and Carol where are you Carol you saw Jeremy Tankard’s project Adobe Caslon from beginning to end yet just completely wowed me and I really liked Warnock too when it first came out it’s got everything and more but I’m still peeved at Adobe for no upgrade deals on their OpenType fonts which is why in the final analysis the faces you need to use are Locator and Proforma I hope I’m being clear but I may change my mind tomorrow.

24-May 2003