Typophile

Best question marks

groenroos

Everyone loves the ampersand. But what I failed to find in a search was examples of some of the best question marks.

I'm currently working on the visual design of a help system, and I'm looking for a clean question mark that looks good on its own as an icon (even at 12x12 pixels).

The rest of the design uses the classic Univers at the 45 weight (which is my preferred non-Helvetica Helvetica), but I don't really like the shape of its question mark when it stands on its own.

Tw Cen MT Bold looks otherwise good, but with the rest of the design being light grays, hairlines and Light Univers, it's a bit too fat. And the Regular Tw Cen MT has an entirely different shape for its question mark.

What would you use for such a circumstance?

Hrant H Papazian

Do you need it to stand alone, or harmonize with an existing font?
The latter is of course much trickier to pull off.

BTW, check out Font Aid II, a font of question marks:
http://www.typesociety.org/fontaid/

hhp

groenroos

Thank you for you reply, hrant!

Headlines and other large copy is set in Univers 45, body text in Lucida Sans. It doesn't necessarily need to harmonize with these fonts, but just generally fit in with the thin line and light gray elegance.

Font Aid II looks interesting based on a character map I found in an old news article... however most of these are probably too ornate and complex to fit into a minimally minute icon.

Riccardo Sartori

A regular weight of Twentieth Century without the Futura-like question mark:
http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.htm?productid=174957

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