I'm really curious: What was the criteria for choosing the 1000? These 172 provide a weird gamut of styles and periods, both passé and au courante. And what does the asterisk indicate?

(Also, you need to close your <em> and <strong> tags.)

>called “1000 Fonts”

I'm no math wiz, but that seems to be more like 172 fonts, I agree not such a punchy title.

Kent, you're a faster counter than me!

Thomas,

I have to agree with Kent that the chosen typefaces are mostly rather common or "dull". Many of them exploited way beyond the border of "health". Also there has already been a large amount of books covering these ones. What designers need is to be introduced to newer designs (and there are many great examples) to get inspired and filled with new ideas.

Many of them exploited way beyond the border of “health”. Also there has already been a large amount of books covering these ones.

Yeah, but this one is a Chronicle book. I’m guessing that the stuff that turns up won’t just be the same old stuff with the same old fonts.

>won’t just be the same old stuff with the same old fonts.

Maybe "1000 Honest Fonts" might be a better title, then?

Hi Kentlew

Thanks for your message. A little bit of background about the criteria for choosing the fonts...

The target market for the book is graphic design students and those starting out in a career in design, although more experienced designers would doubtless find it useful as well. The idea behind the book is to order the fonts featured by major aspects of function, allowing the reader to quickly identify a range of suitable fonts for a particular project at hand. The book is heavily illustrated with examples to demonstrate the range and variety of results achievable with a single font, examples which will hopefully provide both experienced designers and newbies with inspiration to apply to their own projects. Given our target audience there was a need to include a percentage of classics/tried and tested/"workhorses" as well as some more contemporary typefaces. In this regard, our consultant editor on the title, Bob Gordon of the University of Brighton, was ideally placed to direct the selection as he has massive experience with both design students and young/emerging typographers. What we're aiming for is a book that will stand the test of time though, so we believe it's important to maintain a proportion of "classics" (we have also found in our image research to date that there is no shortage of designers producing exciting and enduring work with these fonts).

Coming back to the issue of artworks. Yes, we have found examples for the majority of fonts that we are looking to illustrate, these 170-odd are the ones that we are now directing our search towards... no fear: there will be 1000 fonts in the book!

Any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

All the best

James

It's an interesting method of compiling a selection of font showings--showing them in real-world usage, rather than the usual practice of culling from foundry specimens (including faux ads) or creating artwork specifically for the publication. The user-driven method of compilation is very contemporary.

So if you've done anything half-decent with Beaufort or Paradigm, I encourage you to submit it!

James,

Chronicle is in fact one of my favourite publisher. I have around two dozen of books from there. And some even using my typefaces. Well I won't be too judging before I see this book. Hopefully it will be above the standard pieces.

Cheers

I have no problem with including classics; you don't have to apologize for that.

What I found curious is the presence of decidedly period (and passé) designs like Arnold Boecklin, Braggadocio, Bremen, Festival Titling, and Playbill, just to name a few that jump out at me.

That, and the absence of Whitman :-(

(Sii, I just copied and pasted the list into BBEdit, did a line count, and Bob's your uncle.)

-- K.

(fixing the open tags...)

Merci.

passé

Perhaps they are now au courant in the UK.

Yes, this list looks pretty deeply naive to me. And I expect that will be so for the vast majority of buyers. Even students who know very little may be put off simply by the out of date feeling. I expect more from Chronicle! I suggest that you request help here on Typophile or elsewhere in selecting some additional faces.

We received an invitation to submit work, but we have declined.

I don't this will change anybody's mind, but I noticed that there is a longer list on the website for the project:

http://www.ivy-group.co.uk/1000_fonts/list.html

Ricardo,

Hmm I had a look myself and found my own "Delicato" in there. Being among so many "outdated" designs I can't just be too positive about it... sorry! Normally I would jump of joy, this time I don't. And the fact that Whitman (together with a bunch of others) is left out is a shame too.

Oh, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, Stefan... I just wanted to make sure that buried link was seen by everyone.

James,

I see some of our fonts on the list as well, but I don't recall agreeing to participate. Please contact press@typography.com regarding permissions for faces from Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

Thanks,

Jonathan Hoefler

Jonathan, if they have a valid license for the font, or a designer does, and contributes a piece they make - there is no issue - or is there? If I am mistaken I would like especially like to understand why.

No Eben, there's no issue, you're right. JH

Maybe I can learn to edit my texts better as well. Cheers!

Hi, why there is everybody so sour about this?
It seems like a great project to me! Lot of work though!
Good luck and looking forward for the outcome.

Cheers :)

I challenge anyone to show great work using Algerian, Eras or Delphin. Anyone can do their work look great with good faces but I like the idea of showing what can be done with those.

Héctor

"...why [] is everybody so sour about this?"
I imagine it's more cautious than sour. As JH has already applied peanut butter, here's some jelly.
The cost, if one licensed 1/2 of the fonts in this book, would be around $20,000, an unlikely sum to pay for most.
We get a couple dozen, "give us your fonts so we can make a book about fonts" requests per year.
The number of fabulous type books that come out per year, is somewhere around .45.
Sandwich complete?

Cheers!

>Hi, why there is everybody so sour about this?

http://store.apple.com/us/search?find=1000+Fonts

I did some "great" work with Eras in 1981, but it was set so tightly (as was de rigueur) that it's impossible to read today. (People were more accomplished readers back then). Perhaps I should submit it...

"The target market for the book is graphic design students and those starting out in a career in design,"

When I was a student I had no money to buy books, only beer.

When I was a student I had no money to buy beer, only books.

When I was a beer I had no students to buy books.

When beer was a student books had no I to buy I.

I challenge anyone to show great work using…

Well, that might be why he’s still looking for some of these.

The cost, if one licensed 1/2 of the fonts in this book, would be around $20,000, an unlikely sum to pay for most.

Dave, this is coming from Chronicle books, which has been churning a wild variety of stuff for some time. If could very well be that Chronicle already has licenses for most of the fonts in the book.

And because they are soliciting works it means that they need not own even license. The designers have to own them. It could be a "no cost" book except for the printing.

@David Berlow: When I was a beer I had no students to buy books.

Best ad-libber.

Let me see now,
When students were only beer they had no books to buy money.
When beer was a student I only had money books to buy.
When books bought money I was only a beer student.
When I was a beer student I had no money to buy books.

Aw spit, what's the topic of this one again? Oh yeah, one time a few years ago a woman wrote to me to ask for permission to use one of my retail fonts in a book about typography, promising my font catalog URI would be printed next to samples of the font in the book when it was published. She conveniently made no mention of license fees due. She only asked for permission to use the font. I told her I was very busy and my time is worth money, and just answering her crawling request had cost me twenty bucks, and she certainly had my permission to use the font if she paid the license fee. She wrote back saying another font maker had granted permission to use their font at zero cost (no license fee) in the book. I told her that person was a fool she had bilked into letting her use their font for free.

Turned out her husband was writing the book, and the woman was doing the soliciting. I won't disclose the woman's name or religion, because that would be seen as bigoted discrimination against people of her ilk.

Cheapskates! Never give in to cheapskates. I almost billed her for wasting my time, but that would have cost me even more time and revenue.

j a m e s

"...this is coming from Chronicle books,"
Oh well in that case, my advice stands. There are 1,000 fonts available to every single student in the world for free.

I don't see a lot of people out there behind the wheels of Ferraris with "student driver" strapped to their roofs.

They graduate, eventually.

Cheers!

Dear all

First, a big thank you to all of those who have submitted work following my initial post. We have received some really interesting submissions and it will take some time to go through them and determine which ones we use for the book, but I will be in touch with you individually as soon as we have made our decisions to let you know if we will be using your work.

Thank you also to all those who have responded to my initial post. Whether positive or not, all of your feedback is useful. It's good to see that the post generated some debate as well. Of course, it's an impossible task to keep everyone happy with a book of this type (a list of 1000 of anything will always divide opinion to some degree)... however, we're open to all types of feedback (although naturally we prefer the constructive type!).

For those who were disappointed at the omission of certain fonts, please feel free to submit work. If you feel that we've made some glaring omissions we would welcome the opportunity to see examples of those fonts we have omitted... we're completely open-minded and prepared to have our minds changed on this one.

Secondly, I just wanted to address the issue of font licenses. We are not, as some have suggested, soliciting works in order to obtain font licenses. We in fact have licenses already for all of the fonts that will be included in the book.

Lastly, a reminder that the invitation for entries is still open. Deadline: 14 July.

Thanks again for your interest and feedback.

All the best

James

After reading this node, I was curious to see if the book existed by now. 1000 Fonts appears to have been published in 2009. The UK version has a different design.

It does exist, I've a copy on my desk. It's published in the US by Chronicle, and the UK by Ivy Press.
Nice chunky book, and, what's handy, is all the real-world examples of fonts in use.