* Sans-serif: maybe Fira Sans Condensed, previously perhaps DTL Prokyon.
I haven't seen any sans-serif fonts I've really loved in recent memory. I feel like most sans-serifs just influence from Helvetica and are really boring, lack character or creativity. I'd love to see if anyone here has any examples of novel or interesting sans serifs.
(I also know that good typography doesn't distract from the content, but even under that ideal I still find most modern sans serifs boring).
Note that the plain serif font in Computer Modern is a beautiful font for high resolution screens or printing, but has thin serifs not as suitable for low resolution at small font sizes.
I agree with Futura. I used Futura PT on my last set of business / calling cards and combined with the printing effects used the result is incredibly striking.
Not open source or free but I find PragmataPro [0] to be absolutely gorgeous. Iosevka comes close but I don't think it'll ever be able to bridge the gap for me.
What makes you like Pragmata Pro better? Do you think it's almost $250 dollars better than Iosevka?
Great fonts bring me a lot of joy, but Pragmata Pro always felt fairly ridiculously priced to me. I know the author put a lot of time into it, but 99% of the font's features are irrelevant to me (I'll never use Hebrew, for instance, or even the non-mono version of the font).
Any recommendations on bitmap fonts? I'm stuck with a crappy 1600x900 screen and the only fonts that doesn't look like garbage are fixed-width fonts like Terminus and Peep.
I'm a huge fan of Cozette [0] which is based on Dina which is based on Proggy - which both are good alternatives. I particularly like Cozette's goal of being a Bitmap Alternative to Nerd Fonts [1] as it lets me use it in a lot of places where icon glyphs are desired.
For serif, I want fonts to be fancy and elegant and I'm in love with Charter/Charis in that regard, and I also really like Computer Modern fonts - but that might be just nostalgia.
For sans-serif, I want fonts to be playful and cute and fun - and Fira Sans is exactly that.
For monospace fonts, I just use Iosevka and Source Code Pro, because they are pretty in my eyes and most of all get the job done.
Apparently, Frutiger said that "Helvetica is the jeans, and Univers the dinner jacket." I think that's appropriate.
I'm also fond of FF Scala and FF Scala Sans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FF_Scala
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FF_Scala_Sans
Sadly, these are not open source. But they all have a relatively large number of glyphs.
If you want something open-source and with a ̶H̶U̶U̶U̶G̶E̶ largish number of glyphs, here is Junicode: https://github.com/psb1558/Junicode-New