What are your fall back fonts

[Stormyj]

Hi all,
So I would like to know what everyone's fallback fonts. In other words, which fonts would you use for general sign design, not counting specialized fonts. Fonts used for descriptions of services offered from a company. And, which fonts do you absolutely stay away from. Overused fonts, cluttered fonts, and of course fonts that fail the squint test.

 

[spectrum maine]

a font story

old english all caps on an arc...papyrus , comic sans ha ha
some of my favorites are americana bold, Benguiat, Blacklight,futura,impact
vtc letterer pro.
I remember when the computer was introduced... in our shop we had 10 fonts that cost $300 each. We had cooper, clarendon, helv. medium, eurostile, university roman, vag, commercial script, century, americana, athletic script & avant garde. we did every sign with some version of these fonts. 33 years ago & i still remember.
No monitor, you had to plot the layout on paper for a proof. ahhh, the old gerber 4b.
We have it easy now thats for sure!
i cant bear to part with my old electro-pounce though!

 

[lgroth]

Illustrator default is Myriad Pro, and that's where we usually go. With multiple designers and engineers here all know if we did it, and it's a standard font, that's what it will be. No one has to locate, download or purchase it for their machine because it's a standard Adobe font. So if nothing else is specified, that's our go-to.... It's extremely legible and with all the different options (semi-bold/ condensed/ italic/ etc) you can get a lot of different looks to fit in just about anywhere.

 

[shibby]

I tend to favor Gotham Bold and Interstate Condensed for block fonts. I really like Black Jack for casual script. Our company font is Titillium, so all of our internal docs and branding are made with that.

I just realized how nerdy that sentence is and I'm not ashamed at all.

 

[rjssigns]

Another vote for Myriad Pro. Eurostile, Luz-Sans and A&S Speedway are some others.

 

[bob]

For plain vanilla text: LHF Stevens Pecepta. It has slight concavities on straight strokes, a very slight thick and thicker look, and, more than any other type face I've seen to date, looks hand lettered. I do signs, not magazine ads.

For script: either LHF Sofia or AS Cardiak for openers. It's harder to have a go-to script since there's far more flavor and aroma given off by a script.

For workaday condensed: Impulse, Compacta, or LHF Tallington. Depending on just how condensed I want and need it.

For everything else, it depends on just what it is I'm doing. I have go-to type faces as starting points for various looks but they are far too numerous to mention.

In general I always want to produce a hand lettered look. I recoil in horror at mechanistic institutional work better suited to a freeway off ramp sign. Unfortunately, my eyes are far too myopic [I can't see the end of the brush] and my hands far too arthritic to do any sort of acceptable hand lettering any more. I do the best I can with the tackle I have.

 

[nikdoobs]

I really love Futura & Mrs. Eaves. I probably use Helvetica and Arial more often than I should. There are lots that I stay away from. I really try to avoid Impact. It has now become the official Meme font.
Recently I've been using Bree a lot.