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Nerdy Post: Favorite Fonts

If you write (say in MS Word) or prepare presentation slides (in MS Powerpoint or Keynote), you need to choose a set of functional and pleasing fonts (technically we should refer to these families as typefaces, but most people refer to them as fonts anyway). Here are the ones that I like. All of these are available in macOS Catalina or in Google Fonts.

Versatile Fonts: You can't really go wrong with these. You can use them in body copy, Headers, or as display types. Avenir (my favorite), Helvetica (the world's favorite), Proxima Nova.

Fonts for Long Written Sections: Palatino, Charter, Garamond, Baskerville.

Fonts for Heading/Display: Futura, Gill Sans, Open Sans, Lato, Founder's Grotesk, Didot, Bodoni.

For presentation slides, it may be worth sticking to sans serif fonts, as they are easier to read from a distance. I prefer Avenir.

For spreadsheets, we should stick to fonts that have clear representation of numbers. Goldman Sachs recently made their own typeface for number-heavy spreadsheets (fittingly called Goldman Sans)!

In general, to create hierarchy of written materials, you can use a serif – sans serif combination (for example, Helvetica for headings and Charter as body text).
Now obviously, choosing a pleasing font is just part of solid typography. If you are interested in learning more, I recommend Matthew Butterick's excellent web book practicaltypography.com.

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