What is your favorite font?

[Ensign Edison]

Mine is Inconsolata. It used to be Courier New, for quite a long time, and generally I find monospaced fonts most satisfying. How bout y'all?

[SmartAleq]

I'm partial to Palatino Linotype, myself. I find it exceptionally readable even in the tiniest sizes and it's especially nice in bold italic. I have it as the default font on my phone, it's lovely.

[ShelliBean]

I like Trebuchet, or Palatino Linotype Italic.

[TheFlame]

This may be a rather boring answer, but I'm partial to Calibri, the new font introduced by Office 2007. Its way nicer than Arial while at the same time still being very practical.

[Chimera]

Copperplate Gothic Light.

[CRSP]

LaTeX's font: Computer Modern (example of the font, here). I'm typesetting a few books from Project Gutenberg for me to read, with LaTeX, at the moment, so that they are readable without an eBook reader, and doing so reminds me just how amazingly beautiful LaTeX documents are.

(Albeit, this isn't just a function of the font, but also of LaTeX's ability to space correctly, proper kerning, shading and use of ligatures etc.)

[XJETGIRLX]

It depends on what I'm doing. For work, as a default alternative to TNR I much prefer Century Schoolbook, 11pt.

If I'm doing anything on the web I pretty much stick to Verdana.

If I'm allowed to get out of my usual, conservative reports I go for something more on the order of Eras Medium ITC. It's got a curvy appeal and a slightly retro flavor to it, but still maintains readibility.

[pulykamell]

I like Minion as a body text font. I'm also a fan of Bookman and Palatino. For san serifs, I gotta admit, as overused and hated by some graphic designers as it is, I do like Gill Sans. Otherwise, old stalwarts like Helvetica are solid, as is the almost serif-feeling Optima.

[pulykamell]

Oh, yeah, Verdana as a screen typeface is great, too.

[Jurph]

1. Palatino (the version that shipped with MacOS in the late 1990s) is what I wrote most of my high school papers in, and I loved its readability.
2. Computer Modern is gorgeous, and I loved getting a syllabus or an exam written in LaTex when I was in college because it just looked more real. No idea why.
3. ClearviewHwy is like Verdana that's been amped up for legibility at a distance. Maryland is using it in all of their new highway signs and it's awesome.

Helvetica is freaking sweet, and inspired a documentary that font-nerds will love, so it gets honorable mention. I also dig Gill Sans but never realized it was the same font in all those different places.

[EthelMercaptan]

I loved Helvetica; who would have thought a movie about a font could be that interesting?

I liked Benguiat for its ahead-of-its-time funkiness until I realized how overused and abused it is. I still have a soft spot for it.

A website I'm working on came to me in progress already using Arno Pro and I have to admit I kind of like it. It has nods to Garamond and Palatino, but it's its own font.

[Garius]

This may be a rather boring answer, but I'm partial to Calibri, the new font introduced by Office 2007. Its way nicer than Arial while at the same time still being very practical.

Seconded.

Rather handily its spacing and proportions are virtually dead on matches for Arial, so we're actually about to use it as the primary font (with Arial as a backup) on a couple of websites my team are working on at the moment. Means people on newer machines will get it, but those without will still get a perfectly nice looking website. Everyone wins!

That said, my all time favourite font is New Johnston as used on the Underground which first appeared around 1916. Transport for London don't licence it commercially but they do licence out this nigh-on identical match Johnston Underground.

Eric Gill used it as his inspiration for Gill Sans (fact for Jurph there!), and Trebuchet is allegedly an unofficial heir to it as well.

[elmwood]

For the past few years, it's been the Helvetica of the 2000s: Frutiger, and its variant, Myriad. I've also been digging Gotham as of late.

[dread pirate jimbo]

Nice to see all the mad props for Palatino. It has been my favourite font since the mid-90s.

[Exy]

I was going to post about Helvetica too (has anyone else started noticing the helvetica everywhere they go after seeing that?) Frutiger and Gill Sans, as mentioned above, are also very nice. And I love Futura and other fonts along those lines. But if I had to big one favorite it would probably be Didot; it's not super readable for an extended text but there's something so appealing in the huge difference in weight, and the period it evokes.

[Kaspar Hauser]

When I wrote my thesis, I chose Gentium because it handles romanized Devanagari (Hindi/Sanskrit) very well.

[Exy]

When I wrote my thesis, I chose Gentium because it handles romanized Devanagari (Hindi/Sanskrit) very well.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that one. Gentium is great because it's free and has really nice coverage of all sorts of weird glyphs. I also think it's quite striking.

[Kaspar Hauser]

Exactly. Especially the vocal ? seems to be missing in many fonts. And it looks great on print. And it's on Open Font Licence, so you can modify it if you like.

[Amblydoper]

I am particularly fond of Impact, and I am currently using it in my design portfolio, along with Palatino for my body text. I am looking for a replacement for Impact before I print my updated version (this summer), but I haven't found something I like yet. Can anyone recommend a more contemporary, narrow, ultra-bold, sans-serif font?

[Kaspar Hauser]

Not very font-savvy but a google search gave this from fontfeed.com. It is a list of alternatives to Impact so you might be able to get some inspiration from the article.

[Cervaise]

Comic Sans.

Kidding!

I like Trebuchet

This.

[pulykamell]

If you're having difficulty pairing serif and sans serifs, this resource has an excellent alphabetical listing of fonts, and which go well together.

edit: Yes, Comic Sans is one of those first impression fonts. If I ever get an email in Comic Sans, I generally get a decent sense of what type of personality I'm dealing with. (My associations with the font aren't necessarily all negative, either, but it does seem to me that people who use Comic Sans in normal communication tend to be a bit on the informal, cutesy side.)

[Exy]

Hating comic sans went too mainstream. Now all the cool people enjoy it ironically instead.

[pulykamell]

Hating comic sans went too mainstream. Now all the cool people enjoy it ironically instead.

Irony is so 90's. The real cool kids are post-ironic. (Seriously, though, I am burnt out on 90s/early 2000 irony, and I do feel a shift to what I like to call "post-ironic," where people enjoy what might be considered cheesy or in bad taste sincerely. I kind of feel this started happening around 2003 or so, but there's still plenty of irony in my universe, so who knows.)

[Badtz Maru]

Garamond. I used to like Papyrus until it got way too overused (I've seen it on about 6 restaurant menus just in the Dallas area).

[pedescribe]

Chiller, the smallest font I've ever seen.

[Amblydoper]

Not very font-savvy but a google search gave this from fontfeed.com. It is a list of alternatives to Impact so you might be able to get some inspiration from the article.

Wow, Thank you! I've found 3 already that may fit well with my portfolio, Proxima Nova Condensed, Maple Black, and Rhode.