what’s the art?

Paul,

Are you asking out of curiosity, are because you think you need to know more before you make a suggestion? I’m not ready to reveal the underlying concept yet, but if you have a specific question you think is relevant, I will try to answer it.

jarrod

Big and beautiful serif families:
Mercury
Requiem
Freight
Minion
Fresco
Arnhem
Californian
Meno
Miller
FF Absara
Galliard
Fedra

The Leitura type system from Dino dos Santos is large, with two different serifs, a sans and a headline font variations.

And it’s 50% off for February at Myfonts.com.

Jarrod,

I’m not sure if Anziano, Delicato or Tarocco are big enough for you. Useful and tasty text families anyway. Pdf-specimen availiable for download. Judge yourself;

http://www.macrhino.com

FF Quadraat + sans
FF Zwo
Aaux Pro
FF Legato
Monitor (minus the first one)
Farnham
Versa + Sans + Condensed
Thesis (huge, 144 typefaces...)

hey everyone,

thanks for your suggestions so far - i am enjoying looking through them and some are definitely in the running.

one thing i had not considered was that some “families” contain both sans and serifs. for example, FF Quadraat as Jelmar suggested or Scala + Scala Sans.

it may be a matter of semantics, but would you all consider serif versions and sans versions to be in the same family? or each their own family?

to explain a bit further what i want to do: i will be making a large scale visual tapestry of many distinct pieces of text, ranging from two word phrases to a few sentences. so on one level, the viewer will be able to experience the piece as a purely visual thing, like a painting. on another level, as viewers moves closer to the piece, they will be able to read each individual statement, which - i hope - will provide a whole other level of dialogue with the piece.

what do you all think about a sans and serif together in this context?

thanks!
jarrod

Usually the sans and serif faces that are in one family, are designed to work well together. The one may be derived from the other. Or designed individually, but staying close to each other. Usually there is something like a ’skeleton’, so to speak, to be seen, on which both faces are based.

But I’m not sure if I would call it ’one’ family. Most of them are sold seprately, so based on that I would say they are not.

it may be a matter of semantics, but would you all consider serif versions and sans versions to be in the same family? or each their own family?

See super family.

I think you should consider Beorcana. It’s got a bit of that pen-formed/blackletter feel to it, linking it to textura, which was thus named because of its appearance of lines being woven together... hopefully that make some sense to someone besides me. ;^p

A super family for me contains more “styles” than serif/sans-serif, or slab/sans. Thesis for example.
Hmm but then, how would i call a extremely large* Serif/Sans family? Mini-super family :)

A super family for me contains more “styles” than serif/sans-serif, or slab/sans. Thesis for example.
Hmm but then, how would i call a extremely large* Serif/Sans family? Mini-super family :)

That’s an entirely different discussion.

That is true, Paul :)

“Suite” is a better name for families with fonts from various categories.

Agilita offers 32 styles (sans only):
http://www.linotype.com/3188/agilita.html?PHPSESSID=a1bf313d81fb0954a41d...

Feel free to comment

Patched together rapidly

http://typophile.com/node/39833

Also adjusted

http://typophile.com/node/12270
http://typophile.com/node/29924

It sounds to me like Stephen would prefer to see two lists. Do we all agree?

Nominally a serifed face, Beaufort has the weight and scale range more typical of a sans.