Sunday, January 28, 2007

All about fonts

"And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do."
-- Steve Jobs

Unconsciously, fonts and typography play a very important part in our daily lives. If you happen to visit a web page with ugly design and hard-to-see fonts, chances are that you will run for the door. However, if you are to visit a nice looking web page, or look at a poster with easy-looking fonts, chances are that you will take a longer look - like that poster below.


For starters, the font used in the diagram above is the Adobe Myriad (aka Myriad Pro). This Apple corporate font has been in used by Apple since 2002 for marketing purposes. Another familiar font will be the Apple Garamond, which is prevalent in the Think Different slogan.

With Windows Vista, Microsoft has also set Segoe UI as the new default system font. It replaces the Tahoma font, which has used since Windows 95 for all Latin and European language versions of the Windows OS.

Finally, for all of those that can't wait to download the above-mentioned fonts, here they are:
- Download Apple Garamond, Adobe Myriad (Myriad Pro) fonts
- Download Segoe UI font
- Download Microsoft Core Fonts
- Download Misc Fonts - (Lucida Grande, etc)

* For info - List of Apple typefaces

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