Book Antiqua is a little rounder serif style, tho similar to Palatino. dunno how it will fare in readability for print.

For san serif almost-anything, I'm a Futura gal myself. Ooh, snap, but Futura's a macintosh font, sorry! Try Century Gothic perhaps?

and if'n you don't like Century Gothic as a san-serif font, see what you think of Univers.

I like Baskerville for body text (and yeah, Futura is the perfect sans-serif font).

I very much like the font Obama uses. I found it's called Gotham.

I'm odd. I actually like a serif font for on-line reading (Times New Roman but the sizing has to be right or its a bad choice). Garamond is at the top of my list for printed materials. And for sans-serif, I like Verdana a lot.

I am rather Bookman-ic myself, having started using the infamous Bold Italic (with Swash) many years ago for the logo for a semi-serious newsletter
≡ Click to see image ≡
and it was on various versions of my blog (but not currently).

But when I started working with Microsoft Office (19xx), I found Bookman Old Style, which came with the software, was wider, crisper and more readable for both text and numbers than Times and its ilk (and that helps when making invoices for services that require more than a few words of detail for each line item). My reluctant second choice is Georgia.

For everyday sanserif-ing it, I like Trebuchet MS for its casual-kept-under-control look and my Windows desktop theme uses Tahoma for almost everything. It's just different enough from Verdana but still good for screen use.

DISPLAY fonts, if I'm serious, Eurostile; if not, AdLib, but I am still kinda stuck in the '70s, font-wise.

(And if B.O.S. doesn't come with your MS Office anymore, shame on them! Contact me and I'll set you up with some bootleg Bookman)

(I'm also not looking to pay money, even for a really cool, well-polished font.)

Well, there go all of my best suggestions. There really aren't any high-quality, full-featured workhorses which are free.

Microsoft's core web fonts tend to have an edge over anything else for on-screen use because they put a lot of work into good truetype hinting for low-resolution.

The trouble with the various flavors of Times in an office situation is that the size of the standard letter page naturally leads people to a wide single column, but Times was designed for the narrow columns of newspapers. Using less-compressed faces like Palatino (Book Antiqua) or Bookman reduces the problem of the long line.


Gentium is one of the few near-professional free serif fonts.

Arno Pro is what I'm using for the book I'm working on currently.

I read MetaFilter in Cronos Pro.

It makes mefi look swankier.

I like Garamond and Gill Sans. Don't know if they're standard/free or not, though.

I'm sorry to ruin the spirit of the thread, but;

I'm also not looking to pay money

Being personal friends with some truly awesome font designers (who I hope may go down in history as the Gill's of our generation - yes that good - I also know some pretty good non-potential-Gill people who I still think deserve a living) - and knowing how they feed their children (in the Gill-case, three young boys all under the age of eight) - I am just a teensy weensy bit bothered by the fact that you don't want to pay for a font.

Granted, when they aren't freelancing (I'm speaking in general here) they are working for a particular mag or even a font house - but font houses will not survive if people don't buy the fonts. Don't think fonts spring out of thin air, they are the result of hard work. And don't think the people putting in this work don't deserve getting food on their table, and a possible pension llike everyone else. In other words, when designing something that rides on a font, don't settle for second best, find the exact font you like and buy it.

...... especially when it is for a company whos "company style guidelines" dictate X or Z - if they can afford that fucking water cooler y'all collect around, and those plants in reception, and business-class trips for the bosses, then they can afford something as long-lasting as a font.

/ end derail sorry

If I were producing my own work, professional grade, and something which I had full control over, I'd purchase or even commission a professional font. But I'm not, and I don't control the purse strings at my company. If I can't get FrameMaker to use instead of Word, I'm not going to lobby for fonts.

The fact of the matter is that there are fonts out there, for free, and unless you have a specific need for something of a given quality, you can usually find something serviceable. The purpose of this thread is to get a survey of what's out there for free; what people like to use and what they like to read. It is not meant to be a thread about the economics of design, the marketplace, and my company's finances.

I respect your viewpoint (and agree, to some extent), but it's not like I'm looking to pirate fonts. I just can't justify the expense right now.

Another issue is that professional fonts are not commonplace. So I can spend lots of time and money getting things looking really nice on my end, but then when I e-mail it to you, it looks like whatever stock font you have. So there's an interoperability issue, as well.