I'd say Neue Haas Grotesk : http://www.linotype.com/fr/808330/neuehaasgrotesk-famille.html

:-)

I totally agree with Mr Snow is Nigh.
In the days of Helvetica, buying a typeface family would cost so much that most people couldn't afford a lot of choice.
Maybe it was a practical consideration as much as a trend.

MyFonts publish their bestseller lists each year.
http://new.myfonts.com/newsletters/sp/201001.html
http://new.myfonts.com/newsletters/sp/201101.html

There seem to be trends driven by new OpenType features – script faces with loads of alternates which the font picks for you to create flowing calligraphy, and text faces with lots of ligatures, because there's no longer a practical limit on the number of characters a font can have.

H

Yes, Ideal Sans is likely to become a big thing. They’ve become famous after Gotham/Obama and Ideal is very saleable. Couple that with their excellent website, both information-wise and history-wise, and a decent price tag and you’ve got a winner. Other notable rising stars: Alright Sans and Brandon Grotesque.

I don't know if "big" typefaces are really a thing of the past. After all, printing material on paper is still very common - and that's where a lot of effort is put into typeface choices, both for advertising and editorial material.

A magazine like Vogue isn't going to download a font off of Dafont or use a 1001 fonts CD, after all.

The market has changed because the number of professional typeface designers that are visibly active, independently of major typefoundries, is of course much larger now that they can make .TTF files for download instead of Monotype matrices and the like.

But there are so many very familiar typefaces that people are happy with - Times Roman, Optima, Caledonia, Helvetica - nothing has come along to make them look "old-fashioned", the way it happened to Century Expanded (but more so to faces like Modern No. 7) and Caslon. Baskerville and Garamond, for example, haven't worn out their welcome.

Stone Sans is clearly very popular, though - although there are several other typefaces out there that closely resemble it. So much so that there is no clear winner...

I've recently started seeing a whole lotta Avenir. So much that I've begun to think twice before using it myself.

I think Helvetica was taken with the Rapture. All the other type was left in the hell box ;-)

Museo and Museo Slab are also absolutely everywhere on the web. That Jos Buivenga really knows how to market his product.