typography question

[Chris Smith]

no rules. I work with agency art directors who only like the classics. One guy I know does almost everything in Helvetica. Billboards, spots, magazine ads.

Reminds me of good pop music. Thousands of completely unique songs have been made with the same few basic chords.

Also reminds me of something I heard once: Rookie spreads himself too thin. A master has great command of the basics.

my thoughts on it.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Steve Roberts]

You’d only be expected to create your own faces if you are selling your services as a type designer, that is, one who actually designs type. (In my opinion.)

So use whatever font is appropriate for the design … and appropriate for broadcast, if that’s your thing. You know, no frilly stuff with teeny serifs and filigrees, because they get munched by the TV scanlines.

Go to https://www.justincone.com/tween/ and look at the list on the right. See what those designers do, if you want some examples.

Steve

[Mylenium]

Definitely not. Creating good fonts is one of the more demanding tasks and with millions of fonts already out there, both free and commercial, there isn’t a need for it most of the time. Of course it happens that every now and then a bit manual fiddling is required by adjusting font based shapes in Illustrator (I for instance find myself quite often creating special characters which are not contained in many free fonts or dingbats), but that’s how far it goes. There is no shame in using “classic” fonts – as funny as this sounds, in many cases they still look best simply because they have been created in an age when balanced fonts and good type design were much more widespread than these days. So unless you want to stand out of the crowd, use whatever makes you happy.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[John Knowles]

As others have said, there is nothing wrong with “classic” typefaces. They’re classic for a reason: they work. Despite the glut of new typefaces that come out every year, many designers still rely on the same dozen or so fonts: Times New Roman, Helvetica, Univers, Bodoni, Futura, Garamond, etc.

Use a face that is readable, and suits your project.

On the flip side, I try really hard not to use whatever crap fonts simply came with my computer. A lot of them were made to look good on screen for email and web sites, but they’re not good for much else. I find many of them boring or too badly kerned to be of any use. So if I interpret your question correctly, yes DO seek out some good classic typefaces to use in your projects, don’t just rely on the lame font set that came with your OS. Your projects will look that much better.

[Chris Smith]

This wouldn’t happen to be THE John Knowles from ILM fame would it?

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Michiel]

that’s John Knoll 🙂

[Chris Smith]

DOH! That’s right. I was confusing him with the Head of Visual Effects in Destiny’s Child. 🙂

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com