Modern yet conservative font

Paul,
>The great thing about the Univers family is that it will provide you with everything you need for corporate documentation as well as for display.

But why do you need to limit yourself to just one family? For example, for specific uses Adobe Systems uses both Myriad and Minion. And they work together very well.
>Univers, with its rational relationships of weights, does say something right about the 'internet age'

...and boring and sterile. By itself, Univers is just very cold and somewhat mechanical to my eyes. But it can be used in conjunction with the proper serif.

Neil

Phyllis

The great thing about the Univers family is that it will provide you with everything you need for corporate documentation as well as for display. One of the gripes information designers have about visual identity systems is that the house fonts chosen don't always offer the range of weights and variants to allow proper hierarchies that a complete visual identity system needs to provide. In fact, the last two systems I've worked on have include related sanserifs and seriffed designs for exactly this reason. For me, Univers, with its rational relationships of weights, does say something right about the 'internet age'. But perhaps you should avoid using the condensed versions except as logos; remember, you are doing as much damage to readability by condensing as if you were reducing the size - and reducing size allows you to retain the interline spacing and still get more words in! (BTW, to see a bank that's all [Neue] Helvetica, go to www.firstdirect.com)

Paul

Thanks!!! Definitely good information in there!

Phyllis

Phyllis,

As far as logo design goes, I don't know if you've seen this. It's from the Photoshop Lounge Resource Repository:

BLUDVLZ's Logo Manifesto

BLUDVLZ, "BLUDVLZ's Logo Manifesto" #1, 3 Aug 2003 8:23 am

Good stuff.

"I don't know, the way things are I think they should be using Comic
Sans...Mike"

And I considered a dry well or a sinking ship as the icon for this logo... ;-)

:)

Aha! You edited while I researched! :-P

I agree that authoritative serifs just "feel" right for banks.

Neil

Ramón,
>the only bank that uses a sans serif is WaMu

Other big name U.S. banks with sans serif logos include: Chase, Citi, TD Bank and Bank of America.

Neil

Off the top of my head, the only bank that uses a sans serif is WaMu (Washington Mutual), but I'm not saying that's what led to its spectacular failure and collapse. :D

[EDIT: A cursory search reveals there are many banks using sans serifs in their logos than I could recall off hand, including the BofA.]

Yes, to my mind serif typefaces do have more of a feeling of solidity, permanence, purpose. But that's highly subjective, of course.

Phyllis,<br />>I don't care too much for the free fonts<br /><br />Although there are some decent "free" fonts out there, all too often you just get what you pay for! <g> And with established foundries you have support if you have a problem.<br /><br />Neil