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Font recommendation needed

motulist

motulist

macrumors 601
Original poster
Dec 2, 2003
4,236
611
I'm looking for a professional looking letter-writing font that's similar to, but better than, Times New Roman. I like times new roman, but I remember going through all the fonts in my system one day and finding some that looked even better and more legible, but of course I never wrote down their names.

So, which fonts are like times new roman, but better?
 
motulist said:
I'm looking for a professional looking font that's similar to, but better than, Times New Roman. I like times new roman, but I remember going through all the fonts in my system one day and finding some that looked even better and more legible, but of course I never wrote down their names.

So, which fonts are like times new roman, but better?
Click to expand...


Arial, Helvetica, Myriad Pro (Apple uses this, I'm pretty sure)

Those are the ones that I use.
 
manram said:
Arial, Helvetica, Myriad Pro (Apple uses this, I'm pretty sure)

Those are the ones that I use.
Click to expand...

Arial and helvetica are nothing like times new roman, they don't even have serifs! And myriad pro isn't installed with leopard. I do appreciate you trying to help, but you've totally missed the mark on this one.

EDIT: perhaps you were misled by my not mentioning my intended purpose. I'm looking for a font for professional letter writing. I've added this to my original post.
 
Oh sorry on this one. I thought you wanted fonts that were better than Times. Sorry about that. I guess my eyes are going.
 
Erm, no offense to you manram but all of the fonts you stated above are Sans-Serif fonts. Times New Roman is a Serif font. Also, Apple uses Lucida Grande in Mac OS X.

Honestly, this would be a question better asked in the Design and Graphics forum rather than this one. And try Sabon, Minion Pro or Garamond when you get the chance.

Edit: Oh good, I see it got moved. Thanks!
 
Str8edgepunker said:
Honestly, this would be a question better asked in the Design and Graphics forum rather than this one. And try Sabon, Minion Pro or Garamond when you get the chance.
Click to expand...

+1 for Garamond from me. Also: New Century Schoolbook, which is slightly spikier than Times, or Bookman, which is easier on the eye and absolutely lovely in italic.

Cheers

Jim
 
agree on garamond

it might also be worth looking at
cambria - another ms office (word) default (headings)
calibri - its the default (body) ms office (word) font now iirc
arno pro - loads of different weights
maiandra gd
Palatino Linotype
Kozuka Mincho Pro - loads of different weights here too
 
Garamond is not a good choice. It's rather repulsive.

"Garamond looks like a typeface with bell bottoms. All the proportions are wrong and when it bends down, you can see its butt cheeks.” Erik Spiekermann
 
ezkimo said:
Garamond is not a good choice. It's rather repulsive.

"Garamond looks like a typeface with bell bottoms. All the proportions are wrong and when it bends down, you can see its butt cheeks.” Erik Spiekermann
Click to expand...

Hah, I'm far from a font expert, but I too looked at garamond and felt that it was ugly, even though I couldn't say why.
 
I have always liked Minion Pro

and Garamond Pro is not bad, but might not fit your needs.

Brendan
 
In your opinion.

I particularly like Garamond Narrow (as did Apple for many, many years) which looks entirely lovely when coupled with a leading value of 1.5-2x the point size.

YMM, obviously, V.

Cheers

Jim
Click to expand...

You're right in that there are some variants that are nicer looking.

ITC Garamond, which is one of the more popular variants, was designed in the 70's and looks it. It's a dated and bastardized version of the original and is, as far as I'm aware, generally considered a fairly nasty iteration. There's a reason Apple dropped Garamond. As I said, there are variants that are better looking but overall many designers I know think Garamond as a whole is not the best selection.
 
As others have stated, Minion Pro. I believe it's a system font so you should already have it, and it's got similar enough proportions to Times New Roman, but it flows with more ease and elegance.
 
My recommendations would be:

- Adobe Carlson PRO
- Adobe Garamond PRO
- BodoniXT
- Cardo (free font)
- Hoefler
- Minion Pro
- Palatino
 
Second for Adobe Caslon Pro - that's a very classy looking serif font.

I like Riven - it's on the free sites - it's slim, slender, graceful - you just have to swap out the capital V with something similar (more's the pity).
 
ezkimo said:
Garamond is not a good choice. It's rather repulsive.

"Garamond looks like a typeface with bell bottoms. All the proportions are wrong and when it bends down, you can see its butt cheeks.” Erik Spiekermann
Click to expand...

If you are going to quote Spiekerman, at least quote the entire thing. What he really said was, "ITC Garamond looks like a typeface with bell bottoms." ITC Garamond was introduced in the 1970s. The original Garamond was designed sometime in the late 1400s to early 1600s. There is some debate about who the true designer was by what I've read. I'm a fan of the Adobe Garamond Pro myself. Beautiful typeface in my opinion.
 
klymr said:
If you are going to quote Spiekerman, at least quote the entire thing. What he really said was, "ITC Garamond looks like a typeface with bell bottoms." ITC Garamond was introduced in the 1970s. The original Garamond was designed sometime in the late 1400s to early 1600s. There is some debate about who the true designer was by what I've read. I'm a fan of the Adobe Garamond Pro myself. Beautiful typeface in my opinion.
Click to expand...

If you read my second post I referenced that fact and said there were nicer looking variations, such as Adobe Garamond.
 
Garamond is good. Personally I like the variant known as Adobe Garamond Pro (comes with adobe software).

As of now, the serif font I regularly use is Warnock Pro, but that too is a commercial Adobe font (and doesn't come with adobe software... purchased separately).

Some nice fonts include:

Hoefler Text (famously used to typeset "Wikipedia" on the wikipedia logo)
Palatino (or Book Antiqua... which is based on Palatino)
Minion Pro
Caslon Pro
Baskerville (famously used to typeset the "Canada" wordmark)

Other nice fonts in MS Office 2007/2008 include:

Constantia
Cambria

An excellent free font would also be Computer Modern - it is the font used in LaTeX, and is released freely under the LaTeX license.

Have fun choosing typefaces.
 
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