Although these MS Vista fonts have been available for some time now, anyone can use them without having to purchase Vista or Office 07. Win users can get them as part of a free PowerPoint Viewer 07 download. Mac users can find an appropriate download from Google here. The file extension is .ttf, however it’s an OpenType version allowing cross-compatibility.
So without further adieu, here they are…set to classic songs to give some zing, because Ipsum Lorem is a bit bland.
The sizes are in the following order: 48, 12, 16, 24
Because of their relative ‘newness’ they’re probably best for graphics or PDFs, until they become more widespread installed. In any case, I suggest trying them out because they do add a bit of flair to your docs and even print materials.
———————
Update: What are your favorite typefaces? (Forgot to ask….sorry)
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I tried all of these in print. They are nothing special. Consolas is moderately useful as a default monospaced font (for those not using Bitstream Vera Sans). Still, these fonts are no match for, say, the Adobe Font Folio fonts.
Dmitri, Thanks for stopping by!
I agree that these fonts are nothing spectacular in comparison to many of the great premium fonts out there, classic and new. Some of my favorites in the major styles -
Sans-serifs:
Gill Sans, Futura, Neue Helvetica, and Rotis Sans
Serifs:
Palatino, any flavor of Garamond , Clearface, and Walbaum
Slab-Serifs:
Clarendon, Cholla Slab, and Corporate E
However, since most of these fonts can only be purchased…or some may come with a new system (like Futura or Garamond); it’s probably nice to promote some of the free ones out there for people writing documents in MS Office. That environment is where I see these fonts being used the most.
I really like Calibri – it has replaced Arial as the standard/initial font in Word 07. I’ll likely hardly ever use these fonts for any graphics though as I have my own set of favorites.
Well, the problem with Office is lack of support for many OpenType features, which means buying a Pro font for Office is a bad idea anyway. Thus, publishing will be a two-stage process for a few more years, with document preparation in Word (or in Notepad) and then typesetting in InDesign or similar.
Adobe’s fonts are great workhoses. Recently I did a small review of the Dutch Type Library, but even it seems to be unable to match Adobe for quality. Well, that’s my opinion, at least.
Dmitri,
For 99% of all office docs coming out of MS Office, I’m not expecting a nice aesthetic appeal and neither are most people. It’s just nice to see some variation in standard office docs since most everyone will use either Times New Roman or Arial. At least in the coming years, we’ll see some of that. For those people that take the time to experiment a little with other fonts out there, they’ll be rewarded. I recently changed the text in a resume from Garamond to Georgia, and found it so much more legible and modisch.
No doubt, the best type will always be rendered in compiled and fine-tuned in InDesign/Quark because of the increased control.
Regarding your review of DTL, great job! I’ll add my comments here:
Argo – nice, yet kind of hard to compare to Adobe Ocean since the latter is a bit more condensed
Caspari – Way cool. No sense of humanism at all. I perceive a little Greek flavor on the capital “K”. The diameter of the bowl on the lowercase “g” looks a bit small.
Documenta – The sagging upper lip on “3″ is quite ugly.
Dorian – lowercase “y” is stylish. Capital “Y” is strange indeed. “W” seems somewhat distorted.
Fleischmann – Seems like a mix of Modern (contrasted) and Old Style. The big thorny serifs at times are a bit much when sitting next to the flatter serifs on other capital letters.
Nobel – Those edges are indeed very sharp. I like Futura a LOT better.
Prokyon – Seems kind of Greek. That lowercase “g” gets annoying to read. This type would probably look good on a bag of frozen Falafel.
Romulus – Elegant. I like Hoefler Text, although that is quite an expensive font family.
Unico – Numerals are stylish
Albertina – When I enlarge the PDF, some lowercase letters overpower their neighbor in size. Look at the “x” in “example” between the “e” and “a”.
Caspari – Definitely superior for being a bit more compact. Exhibits some of the properties of Gill.
Thanks for stopping by again and sharing your input. It means a lot to have some intelligent conversation for my readers and I. I’m a typophile but by no means well-versed in the field (still learning).
Thanks for the DTL comments. I was really impressed with Caspari because sometimes you need a font that is totally neural and doesn’t cause any kind of psychological involvement. By the way, I’m no expert in the field either, but I’m currently mastering InDesign (well, there isn’t much to master) and preparing another font-related slideshow.
{ 1 trackback }