Frutiger, a Swiss designer, was commissioned by the United States’ Mergenthaler Linotype foundry. It is the favorite font of famous directors Wes Andersen and Stanley Kubrick and is often featured in their films. Used exclusively in the highly acclaimed graphic novel Watchmen. Due to the fact that the Bauer foundry was much larger than the Ludwig & Mayer foundry, Futura was the font that stood the test of time.Ĭlaims to fame: A multitude of film posters, including Gravity, American Beauty, Gone Girl and Interstellar as well as television shows like Lost and Sesame Street. Futura was created as a reaction to this then-popular font. That distinction, however, goes to Erbar, a font from the Ludwig & Mayer foundry. Futura is often mistaken as the first geometric sans-serif font. Origins: Frankfurt, 1927 at the Bauer Type Foundry. No list of fonts could be complete without it. It’s high legibility makes it great for copy. Included in every version of Microsoft since 1992. Often called “the font of least resistance”. Morison assisted in-house designer Lardent to create this font that would come to be highly read for copy worldwide.Ĭlaims to fame: Your college paper. Commissioned by British newspaper The Times after typeface designer Stanley Morison criticized the paper for their poor readability.
After his death, his typesetting works were combined to create the font we now commonly know as Bodoni.Ĭlaims to fame: One of the older typefaces still in use as a font today. In his time he held the title “designer to the kings and king of designers”. These dukes were enamored of his work and encouraged him to start a printing press at the palace in Parma. Bodini was hired as the official typesetter for a number of Italian dukes. It is intended to fill a need for a neutral font that would work well for signage.Ĭlaims to fame: Often considered the world’s most-seen font. Miedinger took up type design and created Helvetica with Hoffman 30 years later. Miedinger originally wanted to be a painter, but his father told him that he needed to focus on a more practical occupation. Origins: Switzerland, 1957, at the Haas type foundry. Helveticaĭesigned by: Max Miedinger and Edouard Hoffman See how some of these famous fonts came to be and the designers who took the bold steps to create what would go on to change our visual world. Each of these fonts you see comes with a story, a creator, a history and a fan base. When you become a designer, these serifs and line weights begin to pop out and you start to recognize them in the landscape. Most recently, it has been used on promotional material for the smash musical Monty Python's Spamalot on Broadway, the West End, and its tour of the United States.The world’s most famous fonts are just about everywhere. It was used for the previous edition of the Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. It is also frequently used on historical displays.
It is used by the musical group The Sisters of Mercy on their albums, for the logo of the musical Les Misérables, and for the covers of the books in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Caslon Antique is popular today when a "old-fashioned" or "gothic" look is desired. The renaming is believed to have been a marketing maneuver to boost the popularity of a previously unpopular typeface by associating it with the highly popular Caslon types. Despite the name, it is not a member of the Caslon family of typefaces.
Early printers would reuse metal type over and over again, and the faces would become chipped and damaged from use. The design of the typeface is meant to evoke the Colonial era. It was originally called "Fifteenth Century", but was renamed "Caslon Antique" by Nadall's foundry, Barnhart Bros. Caslon Antique is a decorative American typeface that was designed in 1894 by Berne Nadall.