Why do you love them for ?

just buy one and save up for the rest. lay off the booze or whatever your vice is for a while & you'll soon have the cash!

Muzzer, you make me LOL and ROFL.

pleased to be of service miss Tiff!! I find that if I lay of my vices then I have loads more cash, even when I am poor! This damn culture demands so much money--as soon as you wawlk out the door you start bleeding cash!

Yeah man, lay off the booze and buy some fonts.

You can buy individual weights of Farnham at Font Bureau which is based upon the same type model as Mercury.

An alternative to Gotham would be Avenir.

The reason you like these typefaces is because they are done by some of the best type designers alive today. You will not find cheap versions of good type though. So save up and get the good ones. Any project you use them on will be all the better for it.

Muzzer, unfortunately my vices don't cost me nuthin...

Alessadro, truth be told, I love them because my boss loves them and told me to get them. But alas, her passion extends not so far as to expend $800 at this juncture.

So any ideas on something similar? Or am I left to hit the bottle in earnest?

Chris, thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.

Sure. I'm stumped on an alternative to Requiem though...

Yeah, I see what you mean how these faces I've named are done by some of the best designers. I'm still a novice when it comes to the inner sanctum of typographic secrets (more of a writer than a designer or typographer) but I can tell that some fonts have a refinement that is lacking in the cheaper ones.

On that note, do you know any sites that give a good introduction to fonts and faces? I'm looking for a site that gives some good practical and useful information and doesn't try to throw a bunch of terminology at you before you even know a sans from a serif.

Gotham has a few different packages, be sure to check them out.

Avenir is a good alternate, but it approaches Gotham in price when you purchase a package.

There is some good information at Thinking With Type. Purchasing good typefaces is a worthwhile investment. They make your documents look better. What kind of projects are you thinking of using these for?

Requiem - For display or text? Here are some nice titling serifs.
Arepo
Californian Display
Adobe Jenson Display
Nicholas
Garamond Premier (bundled with Adobe CS2)

Mercury
Pradell (TDC2 Winner)
Farnham
Miller
Eudald News

Gotham
Proxima Nova (As similar as you can get. Added bonus of various alternates and more widths.)
Maquette (More grotesque, but caps are similar. Feels old, but brand spanking new.)
Neuzeit Grotesk (More European and geometric than Gotham but excellent and underused. Avoid the Condensed, yech.)

do you get many sales from these forums Stephen?

Nope. But my Butler search script works with fontshop.com so that helps me post faster.

Then why bother, mate? Must seriously cut into your drinking time!! Do they pay you for it or something??

muzzer> ahahahah- very funny

I bother so I can meet people like you, Muzzer!

If you are going to post pictures with me in it with you wearing my sunglasses I want some credit.

I confess. I stole the shades from Shu and the mustache from Muzzer. All that's left is a font nerd.

> Then why bother, mate? Must seriously cut into your drinking time!! Do they pay you for it or something??

Stephen has a brain defficiency which (a) enables him to identify about any typeface on sight (b) forces him to compile handy lists of alternatives and (c) gives him a compulsive obsession to help anyone requesting his assistance. Or to put it bluntly -- he's a thoroughly nice guy who values people over profit. And I know a hell of a lot of people who are very grateful for that.

Shaun, no offense, but your request is actually hilarious. It's like saying: "I'd like a Porshe but can't afford it, so can anybody suggest a cheap car that I can pimp to make it look like Porshe?" I think you might be in for a major disappointment.

And this actually is not such a good comparison, because Hoefler&Frere-Jones aren't in the "Porshe" price range at all. They're a little more expensive, but their price tag is fair, and far less than some of the truly expensive foundries.

> do you get many sales from these forums Stephen?

I usually link to FontShop as well -- just as Grant will link to Veer and Laurence to MyFonts -- but don't think I get a penny more out of it.

I don't see anything wrong with providing direct links to enable the person making the request to find the damn fonts. If we were to give multiple links to all of the distributors of those fonts for the sake of objectivity -- now that would be a stoopid waste of fookin' drinking time. ;^)

Yves>>> the quesion is very valid. Sometimes we need things we cannot afford. In this specific case Shaun needed fonts that he could buy that were similar to HF&J. Proxmia Nova is very close to Gotham and he can purchase the individual weights he can use now and the same for the other fonts. There is such a thing as the 'broke designer'.

As for your malfunctioning analogy about the Porshe... if you can't afford one- you buy a Miata or S-2000 and get equal thrills. As with cars or type designers there is somebody making type at your budget that does it right too.

In fact I think Proxima Nova has better harmony of the capitals and lowercase than Gotham does.

Mike Diaz :o)

Oh, but I totally agree about Proxima Nova and the price argument in general, I think you misunderstood me. It was the absurdity -- for me anyway -- of the original question that struck me. You know: cleaning up an "inferior" font in FontForge. It would take a lot of work and you still wouldn't have a good quality typeface. You better license something decent at a somewhat lesser price, just like the excellent suggestions Stephen and others made. Mind you, while I'm not exactly broke, I do have to carefully consider every personal type license myself, so I know what Shaun's talking about.

And to avoid any misinderstandings -- I certainly can't afford to drive a Porshe, but then again I don't exactly feel the need to. Alternatively my drum kit and my three kids fit in the back of my second-hand minivan and I'm perfectly fine with that.

>It’s like saying: “I’d like a Porshe but can’t afford it, so can anybody suggest a cheap car that I can pimp to make it look like Porshe?”

I was thinking the same thing. I lose count of the number of people who say "I spent the whole weekend looking for a free version of font x" - maybe it's just me, but I'd spend the $20 and have the weekend free for, er... reading blogs. ;-)

This forum is the perfect opportunity to try and educate the people that come here with these kinds of requests, rather than being offended. and to use the car analogy, everyone knows what a Porsche is, but they don't know how to determine which typeface is a Porsche, and which is a Yugo. Give people the benefit of the doubt once and a while. Not every person with this type of question is just looking for a free ride.

...meet people like you... I nearly choked laughing at that!

Shaun, you simply need to tell your boss not to hanker after what she can't afford; if her idea of achieving economy is to have you spend your weekends cleaning up inferior faces in fontforge, then maybe she has some undeclared vices of her own...

...educate the people... my students often download dodgy free fonts in an attempt to save on time, effort or money; when I tell them to turn the downloaded font into outlines, the application they're using invariably crashes, taking their (unsaved?) project work with it. Usually it only takes a couple of instances of this before they get the idea.