Type specific to material

sage's picture

I'm working on a project pertaining to type that was designed specifically for a particular use/material.
Verdana was designed for the screen, Bell Gothic/Centennial was designed for use at small sizes and still be legible after dot gain, etc.

Are there others that have similar properties or features?

mjpatrick's picture

Arial was created to piss off anybody with taste.

:-)

Just kidding. Comic Sans seems to have been created for a specific purpose:
http://www.connare.com/comic.htm

blank's picture

Read through the font descriptions over at Hoefler and Frere-Jones or The Font Bureau web sites. Both foundries sell typefaces with pretty specific uses—just keep in mind that in some cases they will be fonts issued as part of a larger family.

And don’t forget about newspaper fonts. There’s a ton of great material out there about newspaper fonts.

Stephen Coles's picture

Frutiger for signage
Meta for low quality printing
Clearview for U.S. Highways

SuperUltraFabulous's picture

Hi there:

In addition to the above mentioned, Matthew Carter's Bitstream/ITC Charter was created for low resolution laser printers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitstream_Charter
http://www.graphic-design.com/Type/opentype/index.html

For a similar purpose- Amerigo by Gerard Unger:
http://www.gerardunger.com/allmytypedesigns/allmytypedesigns09.html

Erik Spiekermann designed a special version of Meta suitable for metalic machine routing.
http://www.spiekermann.com/mten/type_schriften/

Also CP Company by Fabrizio Schiavi is specially designed and hinted for on screen use. There is also a special pixel font for Flash.

http://www.myfonts.com/search?search%5Btext%5D=cp+company

Mike Diaz :-)

sage's picture

These are perfect.. thank you!

Don McCahill's picture

And wasn't Times originally created for the Times of London?
And Avant Garde for the magazine of the same name.

James Arboghast's picture

Yes

j a m e s

SuperUltraFabulous's picture

According to FontFont: FF Signa, "Designed for the Danish Design Center, it is used there for printed material and exhibitions as well as the internal signage system".

Mikey :-)

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