Giving back to Twitter department: earlier in the month I asked people who follow me on Twitter for recommendations for new typefaces.
What I was looking for was an alternative to the typeface Klavika, which I quite like; it’s among the very best fonts that have been released in the recent past, in my opinion. Inconveniently for me, I somewhat subjectively regard Klavika as having been ‘claimed’ by a friend of mine who uses it more consistently and more effectively than I do.
So I wanted something of my own, something similarly contemporary and similarly strong in its forms, a real workhorse of a typeface that I can call to duty during those times when Helvetica won’t do. I got back tons of replies, and I thought I’d present my favorites here for those who might find themselves on a similar hunt.
Recommended by Luke Dorny (@luxuryluke ).
Recommended by Tim Gummer (@timgummer).
Recommended by Mark Spurgeon (@typemark).
Recommended by Sean Mitchell (@seanmitchell).
Recommended by Sean Mitchell (@seanmitchell).
Two Lists
Among the many helpful replies, Stephen Coles (tweeting under the handle @typographica) also provided two helpful lists of typefaces that he maintains over at Fontshop. The first is a list of Alternatives to DIN, the estimable German typeface that is a spiritual ancestor of Klavika and many similar modern sans serif faces like the ones shown above. The second list is an excellent survey of Sans Serifs from Very Square to Fairly Square, which is entertaining on its own.
Finalists
Along with the ones shown above, I might have gotten about a dozen other suggestions. Of all of them put together, I’ve narrowed the field down to two favorites.
Recommended by Dan Kletter (@soundclamp).
Aside from its clean, solid forms and its somewhat adventurous sense of proportion, it’s actually not much of an accident that Section is so appealing to me. The typeface originates from Lux Typographics, one of eleven young foundries selling their type designs through a co-op called Village — which also happens to be where I first came across another favorite of mine, Apex Serif.
Recommended by Matthew Anderson (@ampersanderson).
Finally, just the other day I came across a font of a different breed altogether: the brand new design Titillium is actually an open source project being designed by students at Urbino Accademia di Belle Arti in Italy. The project was first presented a year ago and was updated as recently as late last month; the source files for all of the fonts are freely available for anyone to download and manipulate.
It bewilders me a little how practical it would be to manage the design of a typeface through open source means, but it’s hard to argue with the results. Titillium is gorgeous. Best of all is it’s free; it’s not just the development files that are available, but early ‘builds’ can be downloaded and used right now.
Thanks to everyone for their help with this search, especially to Matthew Anderson, who turned me onto this terrific open source project that I would have otherwise missed entirely. See, Twitter is good for something useful after all.
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Thanks very much Khoi, this is a really useful list. Titillium intrigues me especially, both some of its forms (I like the S) and how it’s being developed!
perhaps [name removed] would care to enlighten us all. i personally think that most of these are beautiful examples of professionally drawn letterforms.
May I add Soho Gothic from Monotype?
If not to late, you might find Stalemate and Sophisto interesting as well?
If you visit any of your posts through Google Reader it adds some get-data (utm-…) expression engine seems not to be able to handle.
My favourite is Fedra Sans :).
Folks, the very first comment added to this post turned out to have been authored by an anonymous coward who used a false name, under which he or she left some rude remarks. I’ve edited Chris Long’s response to remove that name, in the interest of the real person whose identity was improperly used.
Regarding apparent garbage links sneaking through from this post via the RSS feed — I just checked the Feedburner feed again this morning via Google Reader and Netvibes, and the links seem to be operating cleanly. If that’s not the case, can you please email me at desk@thisdoman to let me know? Thanks.
anonymous coward. it figures.
by the way, khoi: going down a related but different alley, you might want to check out eric olson’s STRATUM fonts. we used same for our corporate identity. beautiful!
keep up the good work.
Sorry if it’s been suggested already: TheSans by Lucas deGroot.
Great list, different somehow Titillium is nice. Keep the good stuff coming. I am going to start using Titillium on my latest project
Inspiring collection. Enjoying the Stephen Coles/Fontshop lists.
It’s been getting a lot of press, but memoriam is a great looking display face. Commissioned by the NY times magazine from Canada Type.
Memoriam.
Titillium is a great find!