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Top 20 Famous Font Styles And Their Designers

Buzzle Staff
As of now, there are more than 100 ultra-modern and stylish fonts used by software experts and graphic designers. The Techspirited article below enlists the top 20 famous font styles and their designers.

Fast Fact

Developed by Otl Aicher, in the year 1988, Rotis focuses on maximum legibility. Its variants include the Rotis semi-serif, the Rotis serif, the Rotis semi-sans, and the Rotis sans.
Font styles need no introduction, they enhance the style and look of the words in print, lending a definite feel to the document. Depending on the subject in hand, various fonts are used to improve the look of text characters; for instance, Times New Roman, Arial, etc., are the commonly-preferred font styles for research papers or corporate documentation.
You may have seen different movie posters and advertising logos that use fonts as per the theme. Every font style has particular features and they are all included under a typeface.
There are variations of the font design under every typeface family. For instance, Helvetica is an example of a typeface, and Helvetica italic 10-point is a font style under this family.
The popular Jeep logo font used for Jeep, one of the oldest SUV brands, is similar to the Helvetica Bold. Another popular style you may have very well noticed is the 'Vogue' font, used in fashion magazines. Here, highlights the prominent and popularly-used font styles.
Antique Olive is a font style under Antique, one of the oldest typeface. It was developed between 1470 to 1600 by various designers, prominent among them being Nicolas Jenson, Berne Nadall, Herman Zapf, and Aldus Manutius. Antique Olive came to be used as a Roman type and has a neat, handwriting script.
It is one of the most famous font styles and encompasses several fonts. It is an original Sans serif design and has fuller curves as compared to the others. The text was quite similar to Helvetica, except that the letters seem more rounded. It was developed by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders, along with 8 others, in 1982.
It is called so because of its use in the Avant Garde magazine. The concept and design was developed by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase. The unique feature of this style is its enormous width―there are five weights that are included with this family. Its OpenType version contains the original 33 alternate characters as well as some extra characters.
Designed in 1798 by Giambattista Bodoni, a famous font designer, this font is narrower and falls in between thin and thick pencil strokes. It is one of the most elegant font designs.
Its unique features include a round dot over 'i', a centered tail for capital 'Q', and two styles of 'R', one with a straight tail and one with a curved tail. ATF Bodoni and Bauer Bodoni are two popular variants.
Bickham Script was developed by Richard Lipton and is based on the 18th century script style. It is formal and has a flowing structure and is most suitable for reports, menus, logos, invitations, etc. It has a wide range of weights and other letter formats as well. Depending on its use, the final look can be decent and formal, or bright and extravagant.
It was developed by Robert Besley and is considered as the first registered font. It was registered under Britain's Ornamental Designs Act and was published in 1845. It was named after the Clarendon Press in Oxford.
It has a medium weight and average height with a clean, spaced script. It has light, bold, italic, and condensed variants. It has been used widely like the titles of Little House on the Prairie, The Electric Company, etc.
It is one of the most preferred fonts for designers. It was developed by Paul Renner, in 1927. It was released in 1936, and the design encompassed almost perfect geometric shapes―triangles, circles, and squares. The uppercase letters are proportionate to Roman alphabets, while the lowercase letters have ascenders above the cap line.
It is an extra bold font and was developed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1902. It is a well-known and commonly used font for advertisements and logos. It is based on the 19th century script models, and was named after Benjamin Franklin.
Digital versions of this font have been made by the International Typeface Corporation, URW, Adobe, and Monotype Imaging.
Inspired by the Roman designs of the 19th century, this font was developed by Matthew Carter in 1993. It was intended to work on low resolution screens and was designed for Microsoft. It is an elegant font with a small, yet readable print. Similar to serif fonts, it has alternating thin and thick strokes, and sometimes resembles the Clarendon font style.
Eric Gill developed this style in 1926, and it was published by Monotype in 1928. It is a thick design, and was designed mainly for the purpose of display. It is used widely in advertisements and billboards; however, it is also used for documents and timetables at smaller sizes. Classic yet simple, it has a traditional and modern look at the same time.
Developed in 1965 by Geoffrey Lee, this font is known for its extreme thickness and width. It has less spacing, very thick strokes, tall lettering, and short ascenders and descenders. It is rarely used in reports and official documentation due to the compressed design.
A couple of later versions do have some stylish alternatives. The slant version is even more difficult to read.
Lucida was designed in 1985 by Kris Holmes and Charles Bigelow. Lucida Sans is one of its many versions and was designed for low-resolution displays due to its small size. It is neat and clean though, with sufficient spacing. It is also called the 'Lucida Typewriter Sans', since it was designed for typewriters. Its style is similar to the Gothic script.
This font is stylish and contemporary, and is inspired from the 18th-century handwritten script. It was developed in 2008 by Stephen Rapp.
It is used widely for documentation purposes―letters, scripts, journals, invitations, menus, etc. In an italic design, it exhibits class and robustness, and has an even-spaced, textured layout. Even when used as a casual font in documents, it demonstrates fluidity, and gives a feel of the text having been written directly on the document.
It was specifically designed for Adobe Systems in 1992, by designers Carol Twombly and Robert Slimbach. It has a corporate look and has been Apple's legal font since 2002. The 'y' in Myriad has a unique tail, and the 'e' has a different slanting cut. It is quite similar to Fruitger and has more than 10 variations.
Designed by Christopher Gamble in 1998, Orient contains only the letters and characters of the keyboard, no extra characters or alternatives. The font was intended to retain simplicity and was mainly designed for headlines. It is bold with medium width. The letters resemble broken patterns and has slightly less spacing.
It is one of the largest and well-known typeface that exists. It was developed by Hermann Zapf and was inspired from the script used during the Italian Renaissance. It was one of the most popularly-used fonts back then, in the days of desktop publishing.
Its versions include Sans, Linotype, Nova, Arabic, etc. It has been copied and adapted by many companies, and remains one of the largest and widely-used fonts ever.
It needs no introduction. Belonging to the 'serif' typeface, it is called 'sans serif' due to the omission of the lines at the end of the letter, i.e., the absence of projecting strokes.
It was developed in the 18th century, and the first designers are not known; however, John Soane used the sans-serif font in his architectural designs, which was eventually copied by other designers. Clarity is the main feature of this font.
Developed by Swiss designer Adrian Frutiger in 1964, Serifa was loosely inspired from the old Egyptian slab serif designs. It is available in six font weights and the italic version as well. It has a geometric structure, square serifs, lesser height, and less elongated letters.
However, it is elegant and legible, and can be used for formal as well as display typography. It has a couple of interesting, advanced versions as well.
Undoubtedly the most popularly used font style, Times New Roman was developed by Victor Lardent in 1931. It was published by Monotype, and the name was inspired from the British newspaper, 'The Times', having been commissioned by the same.
It is the most popularly-used font style for books, research papers, reports, newspapers, etc. Clean, legible, and well-spaced, the script finds slight similarity with Georgia, except for the fact that the latter has wider serifs.
Also developed by Adrian Frutiger in 1954, what is unique about Univers is its availability of varied weights and styles. It was inspired by Akzidenz-Grotesk, a grotesque typeface. Univers consists of 44 font faces - each with 16 weights, positions, and widths. The Linotype Univers font was launched by Linotype in 1997, and contained 63 fonts.
There are a myriad other font styles that are gaining prominence day-by-day. Software experts and developers have been working continuously to improve the existing styles and develop better, stylish fonts.