Merriweather

A serif font by Eben Sorkin. I cat­e­go­rize Mer­ri­weather as an “Other Serif” font, because it does not fall neatly into any of the gen­eral his­toric cat­e­gories com­monly used to describe serif type. Mer­ri­weather grace­fully mixes-and-matches var­i­ous his­toric approaches to font design. Head ser­ifs and some ter­mi­nals feel pen-formed, while foot ser­ifs are rem­i­nis­cent of […]

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Just My Type

If you’re look­ing for new ideas for pair­ing web fonts, check out Just My Type by Dan Eden. The site rec­om­mends font pairs using fonts from TypeKit’s col­lec­tion. I can­not guar­an­tee that all web fonts shown are per­fect (I don’t know if they’ve all been tested cross browser for instance), but the pair­ings will cer­tainly […]

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Calluna Regular

A font that almost made it. A Venet­ian serif font by Jos Buiv­enga (exljbris.com), Cal­luna has a smaller x-height than Geor­gia, and works best at a gen­er­ous font-size. Cal­luna feels like an “old” font; it has pen-formed ser­ifs and ter­mi­nals. The ris­ing cross­bar of the low­er­case e is rem­i­nis­cent of early Renais­sance (Venetian/Humanist) letterforms. Unfor­tu­nately, […]

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Droid Serif

Designed by Steve Mat­te­son, Type Direc­tor of Ascen­der Corp. Droid Serif is a tran­si­tional font; it feels more “ide­al­ized” than “writ­ten.” It has a slightly con­densed, “square-feeling” bowl, con­trast between thick and thin strokes, a ver­ti­cal stress, and ter­mi­nals and ser­ifs that don’t look pen-formed. It has a sig­nif­i­cantly larger x-height than Georgia. Accord­ing to […]

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Droid Sans

Designed by Steve Mat­te­son, Type Direc­tor of Ascen­der Corp. Droid Sans is a human­ist sans serif font. Ascen­der describes it as hav­ing “an upright stress, open forms and a neu­tral, yet friendly appear­ance.” Its open aper­a­tures, slightly tapered spurs, and a double-decker g all make Droid Sans feel slightly more hand-written than man­u­fac­tured. It has […]

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DejaVu Serif

A slab serif font by Tavmjong Bah, based on the Vera fonts. Unlike tra­di­tional slab serif fonts, DejaVu has con­trast between thick and thin strokes. The bowls are slightly square, and the large x-height means it remains read­able at smaller sizes. DejaVu tests well across browsers, though there are some let­terspac­ing issues in Safari on […]

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Le Monde Courrier

A serif font designed by Jean François Porchez of Porchez Typo­fonderie, Le Monde Cour­rier attempts to “re-establish a style halfway between writ­ing and printing.” First, let me say, I love this font! The over­all struc­ture and sys­tem (when viewed on Safari, Chrome, Opera or Fire­fox from my mac) is gor­geous. I want to use it. […]

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Utopia Standard

A tran­si­tional font by Robert Slim­bach, Utopia was orig­i­nally designed for print. It is part of the Adobe Orig­i­nals series. Utopia has a ver­ti­cal stress and sig­nif­i­cant con­trast between thick and thin strokes. The strong ver­ti­cal strokes and the slightly square bowl give the font a “square” feel­ing when used for text. It has a […]

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Open Sans

A human­ist sans serif font designed by Steve Mat­te­son. Open Sans was designed with an upright stress, but still feels human­ist due to its open aper­tures, double-decker g, and human­ist italic. It has a sim­i­lar x-height to Ver­dana, but has a lighter stroke weight, and even more clar­ity (leg­i­bil­ity) at smaller sizes. The bold feels […]

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Ubuntu

A sans serif open license font fam­ily, funded by Canon­i­cal and imple­mented by Dal­ton Maag. Ubuntu has some quirky ele­ments, such as the cor­ners cre­ated where shoul­ders meet stems on the let­ters a, r, n, m, h, p, q, and u. The quirks don’t under­mine the over­all tex­ture, rhythm, or read­abil­ity of the font, but […]

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