[jenjen]

I've learned the hard way that when you want to sell things to the general public, you need a basic, legible font. Nothing fancy, nothing that makes people want to reach for their reading glasses, nothing that makes people already wearing their reading glasses want to ask what the label says. Because the things is, most people seeing a label they can't read right away will just put the item down and walk off. As such, my labels and shelf-talkers are all done in Century Schoolbook now. It's boring, it's a font that's been around since God made dirt, and it's really easy to read.

[Ingunn]

I absolutely loathe the font Mistral. For some reason a lot of businesses seem to think it's a good idea to write their logos in uppercase Mistral, making it nearly impossible to read.

[Tom]

We'll be sure to include all these fonts on the next NWH Calendar. For the 2009 NWH Calendar I originally had the picture captions in Mistral. Karen2 suggested Comic Sans. Ultimately went with Arial for consistency.

[Dayhike Mike]

Mistral screams the 80s to me. Even one of my long time favorites, Papyrus, has become overused and dated for me. It was perfectly fine as long as only Letraset was selling it; basically died a slow painful death of overuse once others started cloning it. Kinda sad, really. (Heh, noticed Ree has the same reaction and for the same reason.) Certain classic faces always work for me, though. Stone Serif and Stone Sans, for example. The Kabel family even works well, even though it ended up getting quite a bit of exposure in the late 90s. And Mason has always been a neat face, even if it ends up getting overused by goth bands on their cover artwork. (I'm guessing the fact that it was originally called "Manson" for it's initial European release helps give it a slightly creepy vibe.) I've always loved Palatino, even if it came standard on so many machines and as such, ended up getting loved to death and overused. It's just a classy serifed face. Especially love the capital P. And Caslon Antique will always remain a favorite (except for the stupidly stunted capital R) as it evokes memories of my youth and the sounds of The Sisters of Mercy reverberating against the walls of my dorm room.

[ree]

I think we have the same taste in fonts, Mike.

^^^^Don't use this font unless it's for your 6 year old's birthday party invitation.

[kleet]

Here's a cool website that lets you compare three prospective fonts side-by-side, with options for size, alignment, color, etc.

[ree]

Hey that looks pretty useful there, kleet!

[HunterConservationist]

[touron]

*bump* This article gives a short history of penmanship, from Carolingian script to copperplate to Spencerian script to the Palmer Method. I think Spencerian script is what I need to learn.

[Chico]

Amazing these links still work!

[Ski]

[Nisquaww]

Touron still diggin' up the gems.

[tigermn]

Gotta love the old thread bumping of late. bump....

[Schenk]

Well, I never could figure out why anyone would want to use "wingdings"...not that I spent much time actually worrying about it though.

[boot up]