Finding the best typefaces among thousands can be time-consuming and frustrating! To save your time and sanity, we’ve curated a top-notch list of must-have typefaces for 2023. No super-quirky, one-use-only display fonts, but workhorse font families that will serve you and your clients well for years to come. Here’s our must-have list for you:
by Lisa Schultz / Schriftlabor
Bajazzo is an everyday workhorse humanist sans that supports a broad typographic hierarchy, and reads really well in extended texts. Available in three widths.
by Kaja Słojewska / Nomad Fonts
Rupert is a super-solid and practical geometric sans with broad language support, and some charming details that come to the fore when used at larger sizes.
by René Bieder / Studio René Bieder
Some older-style woodtypish grotesques are a little too nuanced for everyday use. Rational ‘rationalizes’ or tones down those details, and what’s left is a timeless grot that will serve you for decades to come.
by Henning Skibbe / Character Type
NewsSerif Text excels in designs where text is center-stage. It’s charming smaller details, although invisible at smaller sizes, shine when used at larger display settings. Just the kind of thing you need in typographically rich editorial design.
by Martin Majoor & Jos Buivenga / The Questa Project
A hardworking workhorse slab serif, Questa Slab is designed to perform across text and display settings. The heavier weights really work especially well when set in all caps or when used as drop-caps.
by Ramiro Espinoza / Retype Foundry
Not all calligraphic scripts are easily readable, especially for younger readers. Dulcinea from Retype Foundry is not only very legible and readable (helped by the fact that it’s an unconnected script), but it’s graceful, fluid and crisp too.
by Ulrike Rausch / LiebeFonts
Informal but precise, LiebeLotte, an upright monoline script, combines the fluid strokes of the pen with the precision and tension of bézier curves. Comes with some beautifully drawn catchwords too (see ‘and’ in the last line below).
by Nick Cooke / G-Type
Every font library needs a good handwriting typeface, and G-Type’s new Rollerscript comes to the rescue! A sprinkling of fairy dust (OpenType magic) produces the joins and variations for authentic looking handwriting. Available in smooth and rough versions too. Think of the ‘rough cut’ as a sightly lighter version when used at smaller sizes, and a more textured version when used big. Test with the type tester to see what I mean.
by Andreu Balius / TypeRepublic
It’s not easy to find a practical Blackletter typeface that’s comfortable in contemporary designs. TypeRepublic’s Taull hits the mark with its tapered strokes and legible letterforms. Ideal for attention-seeking titles, and surprisingly good in text. And — shock, horror — Taull is a blackletter type that works well in all-caps settings too.
by Nils Thomsen / TypeMates
Spray-painted onto an old wood carton is what usually springs to mind when thinking about stencils. Pensum Stencil is the more sophisticated relative. It’s especially cool because it’s much more versatile than your average stencil — magnificent for mastheads, perfect for pull-quotes, and just as happy on a concert poster as in your favorite newspaper, magazine, or blog. Pensum Stencil also belongs to the larger Pensum superfamily.
Humanist Sans: Bajazzo, Geometric: Rupert, Grotesque: Rational, Serif: NewsSerif Text, Slab: Questa Slab, Formal script: Dulcinea, Informal script: LiebeLotte, Handwriting: Rollerscript, Blackletter: Taull, Stencil: Pensum Stencil
Want to link to a specific typeface in this list? Just add the number preceded by #. So, want to link to Dulcinea (6 on the list), just add #6 to the end of the url.
Typeface credit (header): Rig Solid by Jamie Clarke Type.
