Typophile

Between humanist and gothic/grotesk ?

eclectic

Hello typophiles,

I'm looking for a sans font that would look between a humanist font and a gothic/grotesk font. Serious and elegant.

For example, FF Meta is too humanist for my purpose and Helvetica Neue is too cold.

It's for a stationary so it should be legible in small sizes, but it should also work for body text. In addition, this font should be *slightly* condensed in its regular shape (like Meta or Frutiger).

Frutiger seems like the right choice right now, but I'd like to test with a font a tad less humanist.

By the way, please do not suggest any fonts that only come in 200 euros + bundles (DTL, I'm thinking about you). As beautiful as they may be, we're a small design studio and we can't afford them !

Thank you for your help !

How's about Avenir? It's maybe more geometric but it has a bit of coziness.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Apex New by Chester, available exclusively from Village:
http://vllg.com/Thirstype/ApexNew/mudTyper+Weights/

Maybe SOPHISTO is too funky and STALEMATE too boring? Judge yourself...

http://www.macrhino.com

if you look at avenir, look at avenir next - MUCH better imho. i always though avenir looked a bit strange, but avenir next looks lovely.

Gotham

It's kinda like Frutiger meets geometry

Amplitude could be described as a grotesqued Meta. It sets beautifully in small and body text sizes.

Thank you for your answers.

Avenir, Proxima Nova and Gotham's shapes are too round (Gotham's "e" is nearly a circle). I'm looking for something slightly more condensed. But I might have something with Stalemate, Apex Sans and Amplitude. Amplitude has no italics though.

Univers is a tad less humanist than Frutiger. But…?

maybe whitney, "a frutiger with cuts in the wrong direction" - it looks good (like frutiger itself) in text-settings but also has a fresh look in display-sizes.

BUT you can only buy it in bundles, so it may not be fitting your budget.

Mike Abbink's FF Kievit or the new FF Milo.

"In FF Celeste Sans, Chris Burke tried to make a kind of grotesque, tempered by the dynamic of humanist sans."

Avenir, Proxima Nova and Gotham’s shapes are too round (Gotham’s “e” is nearly a circle). I’m looking for something slightly more condensed.

Proxima Nova also has condensed weights, but if you like the squarishness of Amplitude, i'm sure this will still be too round.

Love FF Milo ! I think I might have made my choice :-)

By the way Stephen, do you think FF Milo Regular, all caps, in 7pt would be legible on a business card ? Or should I go with thicker weights like Text or Medium ?

Thanks!

Regular is the weight I'd choose, and -- lucky you -- you can try it for free. The thing was built to go that small, so you'd do fine with any of the weights. By the way, if you can afford the extra dough, get the OT version. Will save you a ton of small caps, figures and glyph changing time in Adobe CS.

If you like FF Milo, you might also like Mundo Sans

Thank you for your advices Stephen !

Captured from web.archive.org on 27 May 2011. view this capture