haven't a clue.
And I'm european.
But they probably mean something like eurostile or helvetica.

European style of what?

oh.
my.
god.

seriously, this is silly hard. Gill Sans and Caslon

I guess the answer to Lynn's question would be a question: Which part of Europe are you talking about?

speaking as a layperson i think most average joes (at least here in the states) associate "European" with the clean, cool, modern Swiss and Scandinavian styles.

coz im asked to design some types that trend to the European style
i guess you really should ask your client what he/she thinks "European" means. probe him/her for a bit more iformation than just "European style"

Don't be such Modernists, guys. Lynn's question is... real. It doesn't have a answer like "1 + 1 = 2" but there's a fuzzy reality there, and if we think objectively and pragmatically, we can help. She's probably looking for trends, not The Answer.

Look at the fonts in tipoGrafica #60. As a group, they're turn-of-the-century (I mean this last one) South American. Look at the stuff in FontFont: as a group, they're very European. Look at Emigre: they're highly Californian.

It's somewhat hard to imagine FF Signa for example being designed outside of Northern Europe. Yes, it's not impossible, but the trend is there. Otherwise we wouldn't have differences in culture around the globe. And it would be hard to imagine some of Martinez Meave's fonts being designed outside even Mexico, not even the broader Latin America. And then look at Franklin Gothic, then look at Univers.

Don't be afraid of tangible -if hazy- variance. To paraphrase Jerome Peignot: let's celebrate our differences.

hhp

Fredrik, it certainly is "dangerous". And if I try to nail down why Signa looks Northern European, I would probably have to resort to formal descriptions, and maybe that goes against the "atmospheric" point of all this? Dunno.

Feelings are subjective, unreliable, etc. but they're also real. And it makes sense to me that groups of people who share things (like a country) would often express themselves in certain patterns.

hhp

I'm so in love with the DSB typeface. I cannot imagine it coming from anywhere else, it's so close to DK's soul.
I touched on designing for a country's soul in an earlier post. it might be relavant Lynn.

Mea culpa. I can't keep up with you youngsters and the zillion computer faces you refer to. When I was setting type on Berthold equipment, I thought that their Concorde was a very classy face with a European flavor. Any of the Gill family say the London Tube stations and markings. Akzidenz Grotesk and Microgramma are other sans serifs. Clarendon and C. Bold were very common in Switzerland, though it's American in style. Hope this helps.
PG
http://giam.typepad.com/the_branding_of_polaroid_/

Tankard's Bliss strikes me as very British (yes, I know he is British). It could be that it is because I see a little Gill Sans in there.