25 Classic Fonts That Will Last a Whole Design Career
Eric Gill, Adrian Frutiger and Max Miedinger are names we associate with the classic typefaces designers use on a daily basis. Their font creations are timeless designs that look right at home no matter what century we’re in. This collection of 25 classic fonts is a round up of the best and most popular fonts every designer should own. You can be sure that they will last your whole design career.
Helvetica
Who hasn’t heard of Helvetica? It’s probably the most recognised classic typeface. Originally designed 1957 by Swiss designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann
Bodoni
Bodoni is a serif typeface designed by Giambattista Bodoni in 1798. Iconically used for the Goodfellas gangster movie poster.
Clarendon
Clarendon is a fantastically fat slab serif, created by Robert Besley in 1845.
Akzidenz Grotesk
Akzidenz Grotesk was designed in 1896 by the H. Berthold AG type foundry and was used as inspiration in 1957 for the Helvetica typeface.
Avenir
Avenir is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger (recall the name? He’s also famous for another classic font, I’ll let you guess which one).
DIN
FF Din is a relatively new typeface compared to the veterans mentioned so far with it being created in 1995 by Albert-Jan Pool. One of my personal all time favs.
Futura
Futura is another widely used font that can be seen in countless logos. It was originally created in the 1920′s by Paul Renner.
News Gothic
News Gothic was designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1908, and has the most amazing fact of being the typeface used during the Star Wars opening credits.
Frutiger
Remember Adrian Frutiger? Needless to say he was also the designer behind the classic Frutiger typeface.
Meta
FF Meta is another member of the modern classic collection, designed by Erik Spiekermann in 1986. Meta is another of my personal favourites.
Gill Sans
Designed by Eric Gill in 1926, Gill Sans is another widely used font in graphic design. Famous uses include the London Underground signage.
Garamond
Probably one of the most famous names for serif fonts, Garamond can be found in a number of variations. Overall it’s commonly used for body text in books.
Mrs Eaves
Mrs Eaves is a recent design of a traditional serif typeface style by Zuzana Licko in 1996.
Dax
Dax, now famously used for the branding of UPS, was originally created by Hans Reichel.
Myriad
Yes, that one that appears as default in your Adobe apps. Myriad was designed specifically for Adobe by Rober Slimback and Carol Twombly.
VAG Rounded
VAG Rounded, aka VAG Rundschrift makes an appearance in countless web2.0 logos, but was originally designed in 1979 as a corporate identity for Volkswagen.
Optima
Optima is a German typeface designed by Hermann Zapf. It’s a sans-serif font on a low calorie diet with it’s thinning lines around the letterforms.
Avant Garde
Originally created for the Avant Garde Magazine, the Avant Garde font is now seen in plenty of printed headlines.
Univers
Univers is another classic by Adrian Frutiger. It has typical swiss styling and is often confused with Helvetica, or Akzidenz Grotesk.
Rockwell
Rockwell is probably the most iconic slab-serif font. Designed by Monotype in 1934 it’s now used in all kinds of designs for an eye grabbing impact.
Minion
Minion is a popular serif font designed by Robert Slimback in 1990 for Adobe. Cleverly named after the traditional naming system for type sizes.
Sabon
Sabon is another old style serif, this one however was designed by Jan Tschichold in Germany and released by Linotype, Monotype and Stempel in 1967.
Cocon
Cocon is the most recent of this collection, designed in 1998 by Evert Bloemsma, Cocon features some cool letterforms with sleek points.
Rotis
Rotis was built with exceptionally high legibility in mind. Designed by Otl Aicher in 1988.
Bembo
Bembo is one of the most popular typefaces used in books, first printed in 1496 and brought to life for the modern age in 1929.
Have I missed out your favourite?
Add your comment and let us all know your top fonts of all time.
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Timless classics…Avenir, Futura, Myriad, Avant Garde…love those fonts.
What about Trade Gothic and Lubalin?
I prefer ITC Lubalin Graph to Rockwell.
What about Gotham? That typeface is built for the long run. If you’re including DIN (which is one of the best IMO), Gotham has to make the list.
I don’t know if Cocon is “classic”. It’s nice, but I am not sure where it stands on that list.
@wlodi good call on trade gothic, trade gothic and bembo are both fonts that i use a lot!
Fabulous Collection….
Really they are Classic…..
FF DIN may be drawn quite recently, but it is closely based on DIN 1451, a German standard typeface since 1936.
yeah i was about to point this out. din is a very old typeface, and is the official typeface of the german road system (its their version of the interstate typeface, and has been such for quite some time).
you should probably correct that one…
Hello, slight( well pretty big) typo, the London Underground font is actually Johnston Underground Font ( designed b Edward Johnston) the current version was modified in the 70′s and is now called New Johnston). Gill sans is based/inspired by this.
Gill Sans was designed for London and North Eastern Railway.
cheers
martin
I heartily disagree with this list. There’s only 3 fonts here that will “last a whole design career”. Futura, Gill Sans and Garamond. I never use Helvetica unless someone tells me to anymore, because while it is very poplar and well designed, and despite being sans serif – it feels old; especially compared to the elegance of Futura. The last 12 fonts in this list are a waste of time. Most of those are terrible for anything but headlines, and Rockwell always needs to be hand-kerned no matter what software I’m using. I used to think Myriad was an “OK” font, but nothing I would use over-abundantly, however, Adobe has changed that and I now despise it because they made it the default font in their apps.
Ha, Tim uses Garamond to this day??? Hello! The 90s ended almost 20 years ago. DAY-TED.
Ziggy, learn your math. But you are straight on right with your comment.
Amazing stuff, slightly shocked not to see “Trajan Pro”. I would of also added “Advent”
@Ziggy: Ummm, yeah you might want to learn your math better.
Also, most of these fonts are dated, hence my above comment on this entire list.
I can’t agree with Avant Garde’s status as a classic font. Futura is far superior. Adobe’s foolish inclusion of Avant Garde in the 35 original “standard” fonts installed on PostScript systems is the only reason for its success.
meta serif !!!!!
Good list. What about those fonts designed for specific reasons – these are prmarily print fonts. Georgia is a wonderful font – amazingly designed for web by mattes carter then “given” to the world via mircosoft. A great piece of work by matt carter ( the man behind verdana a font similar to centuary bell but obviously web based). Lets not forget the different mediums we are privileged to design for. I do like print but honour the other mediums. Good work – good first effort.
this has great archival value for me. most fonts are good looking and can be used for a lot of things. thanks for sharing!
so usefull information
thank you!
@ tim. I think everyone who reads your comments has now formed an opinion of you as a designer. If you are not a designer then that makes perfect sense because to call fonts such as Avant Garde, VAG, Univers and Rockweel a ‘waste of time’ reveals how little you know about typography and design in general.
Your comment that Helvetica feels ‘old’ merely hightlights your design ability, not this timeless, and peerless, typeface.
Maybe you should branch out a little more, look around at what other designers are doing before limiting yourself to 3 typefaces.
A good selection, but in my opinion Avant Garde is (just about) ok for headlines but an absolute nightmare for body text.
But clients seem to love it….
….personally, I reckon it all goes back to the good old days of the Letraset catalogue. Show the book to a client who’s complaining about the designer’s choice of typeface (as they do, along with the size of their logo always being to small) and Avant Guarde was the one they would always, absolutely select 100% of the time. Probably because they couldn’t be bothered to read past the options starting with “A”…
It hasn’t been unknown for me to substitute Futura in its place when I got back to my studio – and the clients never noticed! ;-)
Almost a perfect list! Well done. Having used type in all it’s configurations over the past 40 years – from hot metal, to cold type to digital – the only omission that immediately comes to mind is Hermann Zapf’s Palatino. Since I am obviously older than dirt, I would probably swap one of the newer fonts in your list with this old time favorite.
perfect lis, thanks i found somthing to use.
I really like the Dax font.
Century Gothic, its beautiful when used well!