I'm a big fan of the work of Pablo Impallari (http://www.impallari.com/) and Barry Schwartz (http://crudfactory.com/font/index)

Between the two of them, there's a pretty good set of revivals and original designs to play with and use. I especially like Impallari's Cabin (an original humanist Sans design) and Schwartz's Linden Hill (a very nice Deepdene revival)

.

fontsquirrel.com, Stempel Garamond, Utopia, Charis and Gentium, Lato, Cabin, Open Sans.

Florian, Typophile has problems with https links.

Riccardo, Florian — I’ve corrected the errant link to a standard HTML anchor, so it should work fine now.

:)

All of my hacks so far are for my own in-browser use. I'd say (in ca. this order):

Paratype's PT Sans/Serif.
The Ubuntu fonts.
The Liberation fonts (and their sibs, Google Arimo/Cousine/Tinos).
Friedrich Althausen's Vollkorn.
Yershov/Lemonad's Molot (it makes Chuck Norris feel inadequate!).

Good to have:

DejaVu and other Bitstream Vera children.
Fonts from Arkandis Digital Foundry.
Linux Biolinum/Libertine.
The Ghostscript fonts.
DreamerOne from Dreamfonts.

I think the URW++ free fonts and their various descendants deserve mentioning...

By the way, a lot of new fonts from seasoned professional type designers are being added to Google Webfonts every week.

Just to name a few of the new ones:
- Enriqueta
- Galdeano
- Bubblegum Sans
- Petrona
- Arapey
- Mate
- Jockey One
- Chivo
- Rosario

I like Ingleby by David Engelby.

Is there consensus that Ingleby achieves a decent level of quality and therefore can be considered useful?
Two others are: Lido by Stromtype, although it looks a bit “chubby” :) And: Aller by Dalton Maag

How would you define decent level of quality?

Are we counting free single weights in a non-free family, like Museo?

hhp

Personally, I'd classify exljbris's free warez as very good to have, including those w/o eth and thorn.

How would you define decent level of quality?

Well, Andralexis obviously wants to use them for professional purposes. That means the recommendations should reflect this need. Ultimately that is something for the professionals here to decide, not for me.

With decent level of quality I would mean that the outlines are crafted with a certain skill and correctness concerning font-construction guidelines, that the letters are properly spaced and that there is some level of kerning. Further that the programming part of the font is done well, so that it works well in different programs and operating systems. Some free fonts have problems here.

To me personally Ingleby looks quite horrible, some letters are completely unbalanced, the a tips to the right, the c to the left, the e is horrible, the o is stressed to the wrong side, the q-serif is missing, the w too wide, the x crossbar is mirrored, etc...

Here is a comparison to Minion:

Minion makes me doze off.

hhp

So you don't agree that Ingleby looks off, with unbalanced letters and wrong stresses?

I think that "imbalance" is a form of contrast, and readability comes from contrast.
Whether Ingleby goes too far [in the wrong direction] I don't know [yet].

hhp

If Ingleby had a speaking voice, it would speak with a very audible accent. Which accent, that I do not know. Scouse?

Are you not comparing apples with pears there? Ingleby is a free font whereas Minion costs a fortune (although personally I do prefer the latter even if I cannot afford it).

Minion costs a fortune? And there I thought Adobe gave it away with their software…

> I thought Adobe gave it away with their software…

It is true (at least on the Macintosh) that MinionPro comes with the Adobe Reader, which is itself free. The font is however not installed systemwise, it stays inside the application, and I have no idea for what use. I strongly doubt the eula would allow you to install it systemwise.

If you look at the README file for the LaTeX Minion Pro Package, you can read
---
Files
[...]
o 002.000: This version is included in recent Acrobat Reader
installations and is currently for sale.
---
What do you make out of such a last statement? (Is it possible that older versions of the reader had a eula that would not have forbidden the installation?)

Hmm. I'm a late arrival. To answer the question, I don't find any font completely indispensable. Actually, I don't find any font to be partially indispensable.

I'd assume that as a designer, you've purchased InDesign, which comes with a lot of fonts. So, I suppose that you're looking for fonts not used by other people, for a sort of "self-branding" purpose? The free font world is populated by some giveaways from larger families, which might work for advertising. The open source world still has a lot of dogs, but careful prowling will turn up promising fonts, and a few real gems. That's where a font editing program is useful.

In my word -- books -- useful is far more important than new, which lets judicious purchases go a long way. I understand that it is a world many find boring, and not terribly profitable. Again, I'd prowl fontsquirrel, dafont, and the TeX font resources. Open source fonts and FontLab Studio will teach you a lot, as well as expand your font library.

Try Lato, BTW. http://typophile.com/node/77283

And look at the League of Moveable type. I don't find the Goudy clones too useful, but while he lacked a sense of space, Goudy was a good man with a curve. Some of these "based ons" might work for you.

Actually, just Google "open source fonts" and spend a couple days going to the sites.

FWIW

One doesn't need to go that far and compare Ingleby with Minion. Just take Crimson Text for example, which is still under development, but already superior to the odd flavor of Ingleby. Or Linux Libertine – another open source font. Just type words like „coequating“, “recognizeable” or “concept”... Anyhow that is just my personal opinion.

Concerning Minion and the Adobe Reader, it seems like the software doesn't give a licence to use the font. The Eula says that a licence to use the software (and fonts) is issued only for the ways of use and purposes described in the documentation (help, online Adobe docs, etc…). Since there is no word in the documentation of how to install Minion, it seems that the Eula forbids it. (However it is another question, if the Eula is applicable in every country.)

Interesting retro typefaces with a pay-what-you-want model can be found at Lost Type Co-Op.

I think Ubuntu, Aller, Open Sans, PT Sans & Serif are very good professional typefaces, with a wide range of applications.

Google has the beautiful Playfair Display by fellow typophile Claus Eggers Sørensen.

I also like Miso and the Fell Types.

> pay-what-you-want model

BTW:
http://typophile.com/node/10206

hhp