Favorite Fonts, Anyone??

[MikeDT]

I use Arial for most of my materials, it's clear and easy for the students to read. I would use Helvetica, but I don't have a Mac and neither does anyone else. Basically limited to what comes with Windows XP and Office 2003.

 

[MikeDT]



Originally Posted by sho'nuff

Arial hands down
font newb

It's all very well making documents, Powerpoints, etc. using a fancy esoteric and posibly costly font. But if another computer hasn't got that font, the document or PPT isn't going to appear as the creator intended. If I go making a PPT using Papyrus or Huxley Vertical or Hamilton or whatever, the classroom PC is just going to render it using whatever it's got, like Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New or heaven forbid Comic Sans. Same with my resume in .DOC format. I've only used Times New Roman for that, because it looks good and I know it's going to show correctly on whatever ancient POS computer the person reading it is using.

 

[StephenHero]

I saw this thread had new posts and said to myself "I better go let everybody know that Arial MT Std. is now my go-to font." I'm glad somebody called me out on my former ways. It's just a great font.

 

[FLMountainMan]

Garamond or Calibri

 

[FLMountainMan]

Actually, I believe our Governor's office requests we use Garamond.

 

[Matt]



It's all very well making documents, Powerpoints, etc. using a fancy esoteric and posibly costly font. But if another computer hasn't got that font, the document or PPT isn't going to appear as the creator intended.
If I go making a PPT using Papyrus or Huxley Vertical or Hamilton or whatever, the classroom PC is just going to render it using whatever it's got, like Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New or heaven forbid Comic Sans. Same with my resume in .DOC format. I've only used Times New Roman for that, because it looks good and I know it's going to show correctly on whatever ancient POS computer the person reading it is using.

Yup, exactly the conversation I had with the girlfriend the other night. She has just had a designer do up a full style guide for a project she is working on. While it came out looking really nice, this dependence on Helvetica something nueu something else something basically renders it useless.

Firstly, she doesn't have it herself, so that's a slight asspain, but solved with a quick transaction. After this she is basically confined to PDFs - she can't share any of these docs as Office will sub it out for whatever it thinks is closest (probably Arial). This then has the follow on effect of messing up the carefully constructed style guide by changing the formatting that she's so carefully manicured as words start falling all over the place because of the varied character widths and so on.

It also means that should she have to collaborate on her work with her boss/other offices (she works on a regional project around 9 markets in Asia), everything they send back basically has to be reformatted, since they won't have the fonts - unless she sends them to everyone...which is just an annoyance.

So once we get through all this, everything has to be PDF before sending out. That's kind of OK, unless she wants to put any animations, effects, sounds or videos into her presentations - in which case she's screwed again...can't be done.

I'm all for nice lookin' fonts, how can you not be, but when you get too creative with this stuff, the creativity impedes on the productivity - and in a choice between creative and productive...productive will almost always win.

 

[MikeDT]



Actually, I believe our Governor's office requests we use Garamond.

Probably because it was bundled with MS Office 97, and all versions of Office since. I think Calibri didn't come with Office until much later.

 

[MikeDT]



Yup, exactly the conversation I had with the girlfriend the other night. She has just had a designer do up a full style guide for a project she is working on. While it came out looking really nice, this dependence on Helvetica something nueu something else something basically renders it useless.
Firstly, she doesn't have it herself, so that's a slight asspain, but solved with a quick transaction. After this she is basically confined to PDFs - she can't share any of these docs as Office will sub it out for whatever it thinks is closest (probably Arial). This then has the follow on effect of messing up the carefully constructed style guide by changing the formatting that she's so carefully manicured as words start falling all over the place because of the varied character widths and so on.
It also means that should she have to collaborate on her work with her boss/other offices (she works on a regional project around 9 markets in Asia), everything they send back basically has to be reformatted, since they won't have the fonts - unless she sends them to everyone...which is just an annoyance.
So once we get through all this, everything has to be PDF before sending out. That's kind of OK, unless she wants to put any animations, effects, sounds or videos into her presentations - in which case she's screwed again...can't be done.
I'm all for nice lookin' fonts, how can you not be, but when you get too creative with this stuff, the creativity impedes on the productivity - and in a choice between creative and productive...productive will almost always win.

When I email my resume off to potential employers here in China, I have to use MS Office .DOC format, not DOCX. Because they're usually running Office 97, 2000, XP or 2003. Many PCs here just don't have a PDF reader on them.

 

[Matt]

I don't know many places (even here in Vietnam) that turn PDFs away, but clearly your mileage has varied on this.