[Mchilly]

Anyone who can advice me of the best fonts used in graphic design? A fonts that is not boring to look at and at the same time look professional :-)

[Swampy]

"Best Fonts" would be subjective. Much depends on the purpose or use of a font. Fonts are generally broken down into 5 catagories:

Serifs: Have "feet" and "projections" (Times is an example)
San Serifs: The opposite of Serif.. no "decoration" (Helvetica is an example)
Scripts: Flowing "hand written" look where letters are connected (Shelly, Snell)
Display: Unusually shaped, usually thick and "funky" (Broadway, Felt Marker)
Dingbats: Icon's an pictorials (Zaph Dingbats, Adobe Woodtype)

Browse around some of the sites that offer fonts such as myfont.com or freefonts.com and you will see a wide variety of fonts and "takes" on standarad fonts.

If you are doing work for pre-press, you will need to include your fonts for output. For spot graphics, you will want to convert (rasterize) your fonts for output. Be careful using thin, weak fonts in reverse (white on black) because at small sizes they tend to fill in.

I know it is all the trend, but I hate thin "stylish" fonts done in light gray on white gloss. It is all the rage, but it is hard to read.

And therein is the key. Readability! Serifs are good for body text, San Serif for information (bulleted text). Scripts are suitable for invitations, and when a femine look is called for.

Other than that I don't think there is any "Best Font", just best for the purpose.

[Jerryb]

hi,
I agree with what swampy was saying.. that there isn't any best font.

Now I am not professional by any means.. I am just a novice with photoshop...smile.. However I found on my projects the font I use depends on the project.. I use the font to re-enforce the feeling, the dramatics, the atmosphere of the project to convey not just the words but a feeling!!

for example, remember the movie "psycho" and the posters... the font that they used re-enforced not just the title but the feeling about what the movie was about..

Possibly a appropriate question to ask is what are the various font attributes for the various different theme one should look for...

I tried to find some webpages that talks about fonts and graphics designe but most of the hits I got dealt with just banners ad/s, webpage design and logo's ... smile....

Probably not much help but those are my thoughts.

[Racc Iria]

Well, I am a professional graphic designer. And I can tell you that font selection can be one of the most challenging and time consuming processes. After all, it's not just the font you choose, but also how it's dressed. In other words, any styles or effects that might be applied. But that's another topic.

What I do when I have trouble choosing a font for a project is hold a "font election." You want a font, as the others have said, that will communicate the feeling, emotion, or message you want to convey but yet still be easily read.

So, keeping that in mind I will get the text on screen and then flip through all the fonts available. In Photoshop you can use the up and down arrow keys to quickly do this. When I see a font I like that does/communicates what I want, I make a note of it on a piece of scratch paper, and then continue flipping through the fonts.

When that's done, I have a (usually) very short list of fonts that worked or were close to what I wanted. Then I go back and revisit each one spending a little more time judging the "feel" of it. If I like it or am still not sure about it, I give it a "vote" with a hash mark and move on to the next one in the short list. If I don't like it anymore, then I just cross it off the list.

So, I then just go back over the short list again and compare the fonts to each other and eliminate the ones I like the least. Usually after a couple of rounds of this, I have "elected" the best font for what I need. And this usually works pretty well when I'm struck with indecision over what font to use.

However, there are times when I have two or three fonts I just can't choose between once the "election" is over. When this happens, I take an unscientific poll from others nearby and ask them which they like best. Sometimes it's not much help, but then again they have fresh eyes and often consider something I hadn't thought of which helps to choose or eliminate a font.

Anyway, that's my process when I can't decide on a font. I hope it helps you.

[Mchilly]

thanks guys for the advice anyway I'm using the fonts for logo