Great technical fonts info and examples

Report · Jul 21, 2009

July's e-mail newsletter from H&FJ, Hoefler & Frere-Jones (who make fantastic fonts) has a great summary of info on "Fonts for Financials".

The newsletter has good background info on fonts with "tabular figures" meaning fonts that are specifically designed with two types of numbers, the second set being specifically for use in tables. (Examples: Archer, Chronicle Text, The New Gothams, Mercury Text, Whitney)

The newsletter also talks about "weight duplexing" and about condensed fonts for tables.

Finally, there are blurbs about fonts featuring "Indices", fonts with numbers or letters in circles or squares -- a fairly common question on this forum. Examples: Archer, Whitney Index

And about fonts for reversed printing (Chronicle Text, Mercury Text), and fonts with extended character sets including dingbats, currency symbols, fractions, etc. (Examples: Chronicle Text, The New Gothams, Mercury Text, and Whitney)

I'm trying to find a direct link to the newsletter on their website, but in the meantime I've included the font names above so that you can find them on the H&FJ website:

http://www.typography.com

ps -- H&FJ don't send out tons of e-mail, so if you sign up for their newsletter you might be lucky enough to get this edition first, the info and illustrations of each type of font and usage are well worth keeping for future ref.

pps -- no association with H&FJ, just an admirer of their fonts.

Sheila

Report · Jul 21, 2009

Just a technical note.

Please make sure that you read the licensing terms carefully. H&FJ licensing terms affect the type of PDFs that you can create using their fonts. If it is for print production (aka "workflow" PDF), then there are no issues. However, if it is for online distribution (aka "public" PDF), then you have restrictions, i.e. you can't use their fonts without a special embedding license.

See: http://www.typography.com/ask/faq.php and click on # 21 Fonts and PDFs

Report · Jul 24, 2009

Here's a link to the newsletter I mentioned, with good graphics showing how the tabular numbers work.

http://www.typography.com/email/2009_07/index.htm

Good point on reviewing the licensing terms; these definitely aren't in the class of "200 fonts for free" at all, they're extremely well-done fonts, with a pricing plan to match.

But ohhhh, they're beautiful. And the technical explanation of what to look for in choosing numeric fonts is incredibly valuable info. Fair warning, it makes one want to strangle the next client who insists on Arial for tables ....

Sheila