FontsHelveticaNeueLightOur recommendations for the best free and premium magazine fonts with real examples from Food, Fashion, Music Journalism titles. Sans-serif-Style-Options.png' alt='Fonts Helvetica Neue Light' title='Fonts Helvetica Neue Light' />Choosing the best typeface fonts. Almost every logo will feature a type component, generally the company name perhaps a tagline or strapline and this part of a logo is as important as the icon or symbol it sits under, on top or around. Selecting an appropriate typeface is every bit as critical to the success of any particular design, though this step is often viewed by designers and clients as a throwaway a final step where some letters are slapped ad hoc on top of the graphic centerpiece. Trouble is, in this era of social media and adaptable logos, there will be times when its necessary for the logotype to stand on its own, and it behooves us to pay as much attention to the type portion. HelveticaNeue Medium truetype font page. Coolest truetype fonts. Best free fonts download. Custom typography vs. It used to be that using an already existing typeface outside Univers, Helvetica and Times Roman perhaps was taboo. Every logo needed to have a custom typeface component, hand drawn or cobbled together from bastardized characters. With the advent of digital design and the practically limitless font options available, that notion has petered out and its considered perfectly acceptable to adapt an already existing typeface for a logo project. Why bother reinventing the wheel when theres so many lovely wheels available. Fonts Helvetica Neue Light' title='Fonts Helvetica Neue Light' />Sometimes its even preferable as the full font set can be used in other applications to create a brand experience everything from websites to documents and brochures. Thats not to say you shouldnt customize these fonts to some degree for use in a logo theres almost some visual imperfection that youll want to correct or some flourish youll want to add. I tend to be very picky about how type lines up across a logo, so even when using an out of the can font, I always tweak it to some degree. Font sources licensing. Fonts Helvetica Neue Light' title='Fonts Helvetica Neue Light' />The web is awash with free font sites as any Google search will illustrate, and while theyll do in a pinch for a small job, theres some real caveats to think about before hitting the download button. Some free font websites are actually allowing you to download illegal font sets that have been uploaded in breach of license and copyright by other users. I suggest you avoid these for a couple of reasons, the first being its taking advantage of the font designer whos spent considerable time to create the typeface and who deserve to get paid for their work and efforts. Some font creators are actually embedding license codes in their software, so they can track back piracy to the original purchaser though thats probably more of a reason not to upload a font to a free site than download it. One of my fave foundries for logo friendly font sets is Letterhead Fonts link and they make no bones about it. Every font set download from their site has license info attached heres the info file on my copy of Phantom Regular check it out. The underlined but blurred out portion features my email and account ID. Bottom line if you find a licensed font that you like, for heavens sake pay for it most font foundries feature very reasonable pricing on their wares and if youre using their material as part of your deliverables, youre earning revenue from it. That makes your purchase a business expense and the money you pay also encourages other designers to create more professional quality fonts. Another note here sometimes a client will ask for the font you used in their logo. Big Brother Big Sister Program Baltimore. This is a big no no with licensed fonts, as its up to the client to purchase their copy if they want to keep on file. Remember what I just said about embedded license info That would track back to you and once a licensed bit of software leaves your machine, you have no idea of where its gonna end up. Free and legal fonts. Theres also free font websites where designers upload typefaces theyve created using font creation software like Fontographer and Illustrator. Legally theres no issue here the creators want you to use their work and often only ask for a credit and link back but the quality is sometimes dodgy. Hand editing glyphs the individual characters of a typeface, also known as letterforms is a time consuming process to do right, and a lot of free font sets are sloppy in the finishing department, especially when converted to vector or used at large sizes. Many of the characters may be missing, the tracking and kerning may be off or some of the characters may not appear to match the rest of the set. Thats not to say you shouldnt use these fonts just because theyre free creatively, some of the typefaces youll find are excellent just be prepared to do some vector cleanup on final file prep. Typeface. Designers often use typeface and font as an interchangeable term when they actually mean two separate things. Typeface is the correct term for the character set of a particular type style. Think Helvetica, Times Roman, Arial. Those are typefaces or just type. The misuse of this phrase is so ubiquitous, if youre ever searching for typeface related info on Google, youre probably better off using fonts as one of your keywords. Its why I crowbarred the word into the title of this piece. Font. In the digital world, this is the computer file that includes all the characters of a particular typeface and come in different formats Postscript and True Type are two. If youre using Helvetica in your logo, this would be the software youd use. As font sets are considered software, they can be subject to copyright and licensing restrictions and unless specifically stated to the contrary, fonts cannot be distributed without permission from the copyright holders. Artwork containing the typeface can be distributed by converting the live text to an outline vector graphic. Serif typeface. Serif typefaces have little feet jutting out from the bottom of most characters as well as little hats at the top. Times Roman is an example of a serif typeface above. On the pro side, serif fonts tend to be easy on the eyes as the little feet lead the eye to the next character and youll find a lot of books and websites are set using this style for this very reason. Windows 7 Professional N Crack on this page. Serif fonts have a certain elegance to them so are often used to denote seriousness, class or an established brand. In a recent poll, a serif font Baskerville was voted as the most trusted font. On the downside, serif fonts require a little more attention to kerning as the little feet tend to push the letters apart visually. Serif typefaces also are problematic when used very small as the feet tend to pixelate as the image tries to push the smallish detail into a pixel height. Sans Serif typeface. Sans in French means without so sans serif literally means without serifs the little feet and hats we just mentioned. The default font for Windows Apple computers are sans serif styles Arial for PC while Apple machines usually employ Myriad. Sans serif fonts tend to be viewed as more modern and easy to read one sans serif typeface, Frutiger a personal fave, was designed for use in airports with multiple languages. With their generally straight edges, sans serif fonts can be used smallish with little issues from pixelation. Slab Serif typeface.