Bestselling Fonts

On the way back to the airport from the 1994 ATypI conference in San Francisco, Albert-Jan Pool and Erik Spiekermann discussed Pool’s prospects, Spiekermann knowing that his friend’s employer had just gone out of business. He suggested that if Pool wanted to make some money in type design, that he take a closer... Read More

The family that became FF Meta was first called PT55, an economical typeface made for easy reading at small sizes created for the West German Post Office in 1985. Erik Spiekermann later improved and expanded his design to include more weights and styles, and prepared its release as FF Meta, one of the first and truly foundational members of the early FontFont library. As desktop publishing... Read More

FF Mark is one of the most iconic geometric sans serif typefaces of our time. Created by German type designers Hannes von Döhren, Christoph Koeberlin, and the FontFont Type Department in 2013, this versatile family draws on historical examples from German geometry in the 1920s. With additional creative input of Erik Spiekermann, they created a contemporary interpretation of classic German... Read More

A popular choice within the FontFont library, FF Clan is an extensive family from Polish designer Łukasz Dziedzic. A contemporary sans with modestly squared curves, FF Clan comprises seven weights across an astonishing six widths. Dziedzic’s strong, readable types feature a large x-height, short descenders, and small caps for all weights. The thin weight is delicate but impactful, ideal for... Read More

FF Dax is without doubt Hans Reichel’s magnum opus. The design is a contemporary streamlined sans in three widths: normal, wide, and condensed. Suprisingly, FF Dax Condensed was the first to be released, in 1995. The concept behind the typeface was to combine the clarity of a condensed Futura with a more humanist touch. The result is a space saving and legible typeface of timeless quality. The... Read More

FF Kievit explores the synthesis of the sans serif form to the structure and proportions of a traditional Renaissance Roman such as Garamond or Granjon. Work began on the typeface in 1995 when Mike Abbink was a student at Art Center in California. The family spans nine weights and includes small caps, true italics, and multiple figure sets – everything necessary for creating sophisticated... Read More

Mike Abbink’s initial concept with FF Milo was to create a compact sans with very short ascenders and decenders. This resulted in a versatile typeface that’s well suited to magazine and newspaper typography. The typeface was named after a resilient grain, hinting at its ability to serve as a design staple. In later releases the design was expanded upon with FF... Read More

FF Real was originally conceived by Erik Spiekermann as one text weight and one headline weight to be used as the only fonts in his biography ‘Hello I am Erik’, edited by Johannes Erler, and published in 2014. While Spiekermann drew the alphabets, he passed on the font data to Ralph du Carrois who cleaned it up and completed it. In the meantime FF Real has been extended to a family of two... Read More

A grown-up, no-nonsense sibling to Erik Spiekermann’s popular FF Meta, FF Unit irons out many of the quirks of its predecessor, dialing back the warmth to a comfortable, if a bit cool, room temperature. Set at small sizes, FF Unit’s legibility is aided by its increased contrast and simplified forms, all of which (a, g, i, j, l, U, M) have alternates. First released in 2003, FF Unit later... Read More

FF DIN Round comes as a welcome addition to the most popular family in the FontFont library and brings warmth to FF DIN’s simplicity and industrial sterility. The face is more than a programmatically rounded version of its predecessor. Albert-Jan Pool and his team reworked each letterform to maintain the structure of the original. This ensures FF DIN and FF DIN... Read More

FF Sero combines the familiar forms of an American Grotesque with the legibility of a Humanist sans. It has open counters, a relatively high x-height and a homogeneous gray value. Inside the seven years of its development, the classic letterforms matured to reveal a balanced, distincitve design. Eight carefully stepped weights and an extensive character set allow for a sophisticated and... Read More

FF Tisa designed by Mitja Miklav quickly became a new-millennium favorite of graphic designers, in print as well as on the web. Its large x-height and sturdy, well-spaced forms aid its legibility at text sizes, while its low stroke contrast and range of weights allow it to successfully function at larger sizes as well. Since the designer considered wayfinding systems a potential use for the... Read More

FF Fago is the quintessential corporate typeface, a result of many years of work within the challenges and requirements of complex corporate design projects. The family offers five finely balanced weights across three widths, enough for virtually any conceivable application. Its various widths were carefully planned and drawn to complement and combine with each other. Aside from the impressive... Read More

Rounded typefaces go in and out of style. They are often used for user interfaces, or for back-lit signage. Sharp type often looks blunt in these situations, and the amount of bluntness is unpredictable. The solution: start by rounding the corners. FF Unit Rounded began as an exclusive customization of FF Unit. Something friendly and precise to be read on screen, on signs, in print, and a broad... Read More

In 1983, D. Stempel AG redesigned the famous Helvetica typeface for the digital age, creating Neue Helvetica for Linotype: a self-contained font family. Today, this family consists of 51 different font weights. It’s original numbering system for the weight designations came from Adrian Frutiger’s numbering system for the Univers family. The basic font weight, “Neue Helvetica Roman”, is at the... Read More

FF Marselis mixes geometric and humanistic models, creating a freshly dynamic sans serif family. All of the apertures in the typeface are wide open; this aids readers’ eyes quickly flow across lines of text, without experiencing hang-ups. Certain superfluous strokes have been eliminated – b and q are spurless, for instance. The letterforms’ diagonals all bow outwards slightly, adding flavor to... Read More

FF Real was originally conceived by Erik Spiekermann as one text weight and one headline weight to be used as the only faces in his biography ‘Hello I am Erik’, edited by Johannes Erler, published in 2014. While Spiekermann drew the alphabets, he passed on the font data to Ralph du Carrois who cleaned it up and completed it. In the meantime FF Real has been extended to a family of two styles... Read More

When the semi-serif Museo became a success in 2008, its designer Jos Buivenga researched some possibilities of other versions. Museo Sans was not that difficult because making a sans out of a (semi) serif is — more or less — cutting off the serifs and adjusting weight, width and contrast. So… Buivenga made Museo Sans and while doodling around and fiddling with slab serifs to make Museo Slab,... Read More

With the help of Paul van der Laan for kerning, spacing and production, Mike Abbink developed FF Milo Serif as a companion for his FF Milo family. Nevertheless, FF Milo Serif is also perfectly suitable as a stand alone typeface, or for use together with any other sans serif. Like its counterpart, FF Milo Serif is also a resilient grain; although rooted with historical attributes it is truly a... Read More

The typeface FF Transit is a highly legible design that works well for readers who need quick orientation while en route. Made to blend aesthetic quality with legibility, it was originally developed by MetaDesign in Berlin for official use by the Berlin Public Transportation Services (BVG) and Düsseldorf Airport. Based on the proportions of Frutiger (licensed from Linotype), it was freshly... Read More

The first cuts of Trade Gothic were designed by Jackson Burke in 1948. He continued to work on further weights and styles until 1960 while he was director of type development for Mergenthaler-Linotype in the USA. Trade Gothic does not display as much unifying family structure as other popular sans serif font families, but this dissonance adds a bit of earthy naturalism to its appeal. Trade... Read More

FF Cocon’s designer, Evert Bloemsma (1958–2005) described it as a “serious typeface.” Despite first impressions, the description holds up well. Since its 2001 release, FF Cocon has been used in an astoundingly wide variety of design applications. At large sizes, FF Cocon works as a display face, with beautiful detailing. And at small sizes, it remains surprisingly readable. The lowercase... Read More

Myriad® was designed in 1992 by Robert Slimbach, Carol Twombly, and the design staff at Adobe Systems. It's a humanist sans serif typeface, meaning that the forms are primarily based on classic romans, much like conventional or classic serifed fonts but without the serifs. Myriad also has subtle geometric shaping and monotone color, balanced by varying letter widths and open counter shapes. A... Read More

Under the guidance of Albert-Jan Pool and Professor André Heers, Jakob Runge started designing the typeface that would ultimately become FF Franziska as part of his studies at Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel. The robust text face performs well in body text, while its more extreme weights do the work of setting headlines. Details such as its short descenders accommodate tighter... Read More