bruce@trigraph.UUCP (Bruce Freeman) (06/10/89)
Although it may look like everyone uses Times they actually use Helvetica! I work at a typesetting company and so would like to add some statistics to the debate over what typefaces people use. The following is a list of the top 20 fonts used over the past year at my company: Helvetica Medium Times Roman Helvetica Medium Condensed News Gothic Regular Helvetica Bold Garamond Light Helvetica Light Palatino Meridien Baskerville Helvetica Heavy Trump Medieval Bembo Helvetica Bold Condensed Helvetica Medium Italic Century Old Style Helvetica Light Condensed Century Schoolbook Univers Medium Aster This list is based on the number of characters set in each font. We do everything from textbooks, novels, reports, catalogues, ads, you name it so the above is a fairly good cross section of what faces people use. By the way nearly twice as many characters were set in Helvetica Medium compared to Times Roman. It would appear that those who don't use Helvetica use Times though :-) -- Bruce Freeman Trigraph Inc., Toronto, Canada utzoo!trigraph!bruce
kibo@pawl.rpi.edu (James 'Kibo' Parry) (06/12/89)
In article <461@trigraph.UUCP> bruce@trigraph.UUCP (Bruce Freeman) writes: > The following is a list of the top >20 fonts used over the past year at my company: [list deleted] What? No Futura? Gee, is it finally going out of style? [The government seems to love Futura. Sigh...] james "kibo" parry, 138 birch lane, scotia, ny 12302 usa /// All colors are kibo%pawl.rpi.edu@itsgw.rpi.edu __________________/// arbitrary. kibo@mts.rpi.edu /// Anything I say is the opinion of userfe0n@rpitsmts.bitnet /// myself and not this computer.
texins02@umd5.umd.edu (TeX Short Course Instructor) (06/14/89)
In article <461@trigraph.UUCP> bruce@trigraph.UUCP (Bruce Freeman) writes: >Although it may look like everyone uses Times they actually use Helvetica! I >work at a typesetting company and so would like to add some statistics to >the debate over what typefaces people use. The following is a list of the top >20 fonts used over the past year at my company: Arg! I'm very glad that I don't buy books typeset by your clients... Helvetica is a terrible font to try and read for more than a page... Of course there ARE some weird types who think Sans-serif fonts are the way to go (there are even some people who like that really ugly font that's based on arcs of circles whose name I forget). Of course, there are also people who like having six inch spikes driven into their skulls. -don hosek u33297@uicvm.uic.edu
cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (06/15/89)
In article <5006@umd5.umd.edu> texins02@umd5.umd.edu (TeX Short Course Instructor) writes: } }.. Of course there ARE }some weird types who think Sans-serif fonts are the way to go (there are }even some people who like that really ugly font that's based on arcs of circles }whose name I forget). You mean ITC Bauhaus? /bernie\
bruce@trigraph.UUCP (Bruce Freeman) (06/16/89)
Just as a followup on the faces used at my company: >Arg! I'm very glad that I don't buy books typeset by your clients... Helvetica >is a terrible font to try and read for more than a page... Of course there ARE >some weird types who think Sans-serif fonts are the way to go (there are >even some people who like that really ugly font that's based on arcs of circles >whose name I forget). I should mention that I can't recall ever seeing a book/novel using Helvetica, the heavy weighting of Helvetica in my list is due to the fact that any catalogue, price list, parts list, directory, etc. you pick up these days uses that face (and we do a lot of that work). This has been gone over before in this group but sans serif faces are generally thought to be more legible than serif faces for those types of printed materials. We don't pick the faces, designers do. Of more interest was the serif faces in the list. Several people have sent me email commenting on this or that face in the list or not on the list. This seems to be part of the cycle with designers on which faces are "fashionable". Some faces such as Times seem to be always in fashion while others, like Palatino which nobody seemed to use several years ago, come and go in cycles. In fact I have heard some people complaining about the heavy use of Palatino nowadays and pushing some other serif face. It would be interesting to see a list of the most used faces for the last 10 or 20 years and see which faces rise and fall in the lists. -- Bruce Freeman Trigraph Inc., Toronto, Canada utzoo!trigraph!bruce