I like, amongst others, in no particular order:

- Klavika - Nice modern squarish sans
- Legato - Good for both text and larger use, very large family
- Fedra Sans - Especially nice when combined with Fedra Serif.
- Locator - No special reason.
- Engel - More friendly then Klavika.
- Sansa (+ Soft) - Just pure genius, imo. ;)
- Fresco Sans - Works well for body text (and then there's the serif that goes with it.)
- Quadraat Sans - Same as Fresco Sans.

Not specifically typefaces I bought, but these came to mind right now. There are more that I like of course, but it's too late now to type more. :)

Well you stole a couple of mine (Bryant and Galaxy Polaris), but here are some more recent favorites:

Amplitude by Christian Schwartz
After three years, it's still my favorite workhorse. Amplitude looks right in almost any setting — clean and readable at text sizes, vibrant and powerful in headlines. With an inktrapless version and italics on the way, soon you'll be able to use Amplitude for anything.

FF Strada and FF Strada Condensed by Albert Pinggera
Its warm curves can make it friendly if it needs to be, but you can use it to set serious text too. Wonderfully readable at small sizes, unique detail when large. One of few contemporary typefaces drawn by an Italian.

Maquette by Angus Shamal
A new large x-heighted alternative in the grotesque style of Gotham and Proxima Nova.

• Galaxy Polaris: Great workhorse for the studio, but a little limited. Basically our helvetica.

what do you mean by a little limited? doesn;t it have basically everything?

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Chopper Reid says "Harden the **** up".

I just licensed Apex New from Village. Very nice.

Sharon

New Fav is Hypatia from Adobe. Nearly nothing gives the flavor and poise of this new/old fashioned design.

Chianti from Bitstream has very pleasing modeling, almost a woodcut or handcut punch look. Lots of flavor and some unusual swash and ligature forms, along with small caps etc.

I second Apex New. Forget the original Apex. This is how it should be.

Sebastian by Storm. Very unusual, modeled like Chianti but more baroque.

Suite by Inigo Jerez Quintana. Needs to be seen and used more. For that matter all his types are interesting, and there are several sans at the textasis site.

i guess i like my sans with a bit of flavor. My current favorites are yet unreleased gems by Kris Sowersby:

National Grotesque
and
Karbon

I also like Storm's sans faces: Sebastian, John Sans as well has the some-serifs, Juvenis.

last sans i licensed was Maple, although i do wish it had small caps.

i guess i like all these because they have enough personality to be interesting and not so much that they distract. (except maybe maplehas a bit too much flavor for general use.)

...oh and then there's the over-bloated project i'm working on at the moment... >^P

National Grotesque and Maple are indeed very nice faces. I especially like the bolder weight 'a' in both of them.

really nice picks in here guys. thanks.

to muzzer's point about Polaris. I just wish it had a small caps and ideally an extra light weight. if that font ever had a condensed weight then it would be a perfect typeface.

Apex new is very nice as well, forget about that one, been using it since the Apex Sans days.

Inigo is kicking ass over there. Really nice catalogue.

good stuff guys. have a great weekend.

Lisboa by Fountain.

I like my sans with a dash of Tabasco sauce.

Legato, first and foremost.

hhp

Ahh, Legato.

hrant, I know you were (and are) a real admirer of Evert Bloemsma. His passing is quite a loss for the typographic community.

We need to pick up the torch now.

hhp

I think balance is much bettedr than legato. the idea is more pure, more interesting. Legato is just a bit too dull.

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Chopper Reid says "Harden the **** up".

Whoa, I think you have them reversed, muzzer. I wish Bloemsma's site was still up so you could see more.

I think Legato is beautiful.

Ahh, fortunately we saved Bloemsma's texts and PDF on FF Legato in the Typowiki.

"Whoa, I think you have them reversed, muzzer"

not at all. I think Balance is much better than legato. I like typefaces with grunt and charm. Balance is much nicer in print.

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Chopper Reid says "Harden the **** up".

Have you seen Legato in print? I have only printed the PDF, and I'm not sure laser on office paper is the best example of what it can do.

yeah, i have seen both in offset print. can't remember where, though. I am not saying legato is shit, just that I think balance is his best!! we are talking taste here, are we not? so how can you argue with that? sometimes designers overthink their ideas, overpolish tem and lose their way a bit.

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Chopper Reid says "Harden the **** up".

Muzzer, you poser. Where have you seen Legato in print?

hhp

"Muzzer, you poser. Where have you seen Legato in print?"

Ha! Poser! Tha tis the pot calling the kettle black mate! I can't remember, it may have been an art cartalogue, or some other cultural brochure. Maybe an FF brochure? I dunno. All I remember is that it didn't seem to work as nicely as balance, it was a bit too bla for me. Have you seen Legato in print? I would hope so, otherwise you are worshipping the idea of a type rather than than what it looks like.

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Chopper Reid says "Harden the **** up".

You know me, I'm a theory guy. So although I reserve the right to change my mind after seeing a font in actual use, I do feel comfortable supporting (but never "worshiping") a font based solely on an idea that I consider good. That said, I have indeed seen Legato in use, although only at pretty large sizes*. I also have a PDF of a spread from a book that uses Legato, but like Stephen I admit that might not be good enough. The thing with Legato is, like you say, it's "boring" (superficially) so there can't really be anything fatally wrong with it, so judging it based on ideology seems safer.

* http://typophile.com/node/29064

hhp

very interesting. I am not really into the theory, people get too wound up over it. I like to trust my eyes, as the eyes will always be the final judge and jury!! like i said above, I like balance over Legata, but they are both shitloads better than most of the utter rubbish that is spewed out these days. there was a thread on myfonts a while back....

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Chopper Reid says "Harden the **** up".

I don't know how to say this, so I'll just come out and say this:
I hate Amplitude. I think it's a ridiculous face in any setting above 14pt. The ink traps are NOT beautiful, they're heavy-handed and contrived. My local newspaper (for which I used to design) has recently adopted Amplitude for its headline face. You don't know inappropriate until you've seen Amp in 96 pt UC.

Okay. I said it.

"I hate Amplitude. I think it’s a ridiculous face in any setting above 14pt"

And whos fault is that? the designer or the type designer?? can you hadle it for text setting?

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Chopper Reid says "Harden the **** up".

I agree that it's not probably not appropriate for a daily newspaper.

How about Made With FontFont?
Legato is used/shown quit a bit within the book.

And to Samuel Clemens... er I mean, Muzzer...

> And to Samuel Clemens… er I mean, Muzzer…

Don't you mean Mark Twain? I would have gone with Nathaniel Hornblower... Mark Twain is being very generous.

Or better yet, Hermann Püterschein.

you are too kind!!

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Chopper Reid says "Harden the **** up".

The first one would be Grotesque MT, a really weird sans, incredibly effective in text use.

I'm with you on Grotesque MT, kuroneko.

let us not forget Unit, which has a great range of weights and is really versitile. It also seems to be very much of our time,. And Prokyon, but who the **** has that sort of money to splurge!? ALso Caspari but again we have the money problem....

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Chopper Reid says "Harden the **** up".

Muzzer:
You're right, of course, when you ask, "whose fault is that?" but we could use that rationale to defend even Sand. While there are good uses for Amplitude (and I concede that text settings are FAR more appropriate than massive headlines) it's sometimes dangerous just having a loaded gun around where children can get hold!

"You’re right, of course, when you ask, “whose fault is that?” but we could use that rationale to defend even Sand."

wow, lumping together amplitude and sand. nice logic.

"While there are good uses for Amplitude (and I concede that text settings are FAR more appropriate than massive headlines)"

There you go. I ask again: whos fault is it? The stupid designer. As usual.

"it’s sometimes dangerous just having a loaded gun around where children can get hold!"

Christ. you might need to check your perspective mate!!

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Chopper Reid says "Harden the **** up".

>Suite by Inigo Jerez Quintana. Needs to be seen and used more. For that matter all his types are interesting, and there are several sans at the textasis site.

carl, i hadn't heard of this guy before. thanks for a great tip.

.........................................................
Bison Design
Spön

> I agree that it’s not probably not appropriate for a daily newspaper.
Oh yes it is!
http://flickr.com/photos/89618539@N00/96218706/

A matter of taste, then. We adviced one of our clients, the daily newspaper Upsala Nya Tidning, to use Amplitude in headlines, introductions &c. And so they did, although Christian was asked to redraw som characters to smooth out the inktraps. In this particular example it was used together with Lexicon. Niiice contrast. Personally I think the inktraps work well in large sizes. Not as inktraps obviously, but as an interesting visual detail. But there You go.

ƒ

I think there are pros and cons to Amp in large sizes. Like Fredo says, the traps can add an unexpected element that might be interesting. Those same elements may well be distracting on the other hand.

> http://flickr.com/photos/89618539@N00/96218706/

Certainly in that case the traps looks quite... fitting.

hhp

Here are the sans-serif fonts I purchased this year:
TheSans Office
Parisine Plus

I wanted fonts that were readable and legible, where the italic had different letterforms than the roman, had R/I/B/BI varients, and that didn't look like everything else.

I got TheSans Office because it had what I wanted at a price I could afford. (Why do so many foundries only sell their fonts in humongous bundles at outrageous prices? Is it to keep non-pros like me from buying them?)

I went with Parisine Plus instead of Parisine because I wanted something a little more lively -- fun or quirky, if you will -- without being too eccentric.

I'm happy with my purchases, and I'm glad no one has yet cited them on this thread, because they will look like everything else if everybody uses them.

We just bought leitura from dstype. It works great in the project we bought it for, but it's a bit too eccentric and narrow for being a the new workhorse of the studio.
.........................................................
Bison Design
Spön

Zion Train looks tasty, but i wish Andrij would include his cyrillics!!!
this also reminds me a bit of Relato Sans, which also seems quite nice.

I recently discovered two san serif faces that have my interest up.

One is Zwo from FontShop
Zwo Family.

and the other a Dutch Type Foundry font called Prokyon
DTF Prokyon.

In fact, I love the clean, readible typefaces from DTF I've spotted in general. I've been learning more about type foundries from around the world, that I don't think I would have been introduced to without the net.