ITC Officina Sans Alternatives

The family that became FF Meta was first called PT55, an economical typeface made for easy reading at small sizes created for the West... Read More

FF Letter Gothic is a family designed by Albert Pinggera based on the old IBM “Letter Gothic” typewriter faces. As the name suggests,... Read More

FF Info is named after its purpose: the transfer of information. Its clean lines make no fashion statements, nor do they attempt any technical wizardry. The typeface was initially intended for use on traffic signage,and other wayfinding systems in stations, on buildings, etc. Because space comes at a premium in such situations, FF Info Display is drawn narrow; It requires 15% less space than... Read More

When ITC Officina was first released in 1990, as a paired family of serif and sans serif faces in two weights with italics, it was... Read More

When ITC Officina was first released in 1990, as a paired family of serif and sans serif faces in two weights with italics, it was intended as a workhorse typeface for business correspondence. But the typeface proved popular in many more areas than correspondence. Erik Spiekermann, ITC Officina's designer: "Once ITC Officina got picked up by the trendsetters to denote 'coolness,' it had lost... Read More

Arial was designed for Monotype in 1982 by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders. A contemporary sans serif design, Arial contains more humanist characteristics than many of its predecessors and as such is more in tune with the mood of the last decades of the twentieth century. The overall treatment of curves is softer and fuller than in most industrial style sans serif faces. Terminal strokes... Read More

Rotis® is a comprehensive family group with Sans Serif, Semi Sans, Serif, and Semi Serif styles, for a total of 17 weights including italics. The four families have similar weights, heights and proportions; though the Sans is primarily monotone, the Semi Sans has swelling strokes, the Semi Serif has just a few serifs, and the Serif has serifs and strokes with mostly vertical axes. Designed by... Read More

FF Good is a straight-sided sans serif in the American Gothic tradition, designed by Warsaw-based Łukasz Dziedzic. Despite having something of an “old-fashioned” heritage, FF Good feels new. Many customers agree: the sturdy, legible forms of FF Good have been put to good use in the Polish-language magazine ‘Komputer Swiat,’ the German and Russian edition of the celebrity tabloid OK!, and the... Read More

Dialog is my first sans serif. I had made some attempts earlier, but they didn't satisfy me. Dialog was, on the contrary, so inspiring that I made 19 different fonts of it, the most complete typeface for several years. I usually prefer typefaces with serifs, but I don't miss them in Dialog. The name needs no explanation. Dialog was released in 1993.

The first cuts of Trade Gothic were designed by Jackson Burke in 1948. He continued to work on further weights and styles until 1960... Read More

The Slate typeface family melds superb functionality and aesthetic elegance into a remarkable communications tool. Few typefaces possess the beauty and power of this design.Slate is the work of Rod McDonald, an award-winning typeface designer and lettering artist. At one point in his forty-year career, McDonald participated in a typeface legibility and readability research project conducted by... Read More

According to designer David Farey, "Cachet is a monospaced, monostroke typeface -- that isn't." Why the sleight of hand? Typefaces that are limited to a single character and stroke width suffer in terms of legibility. Farey's goal in drawing Cachet was to create a typeface that gives the illusion of monospacing, while delivering a subliminal dose of reader-friendliness.At first glance, Cachet... Read More

Tetria was designed by Martin Jagodzinski, who says that the font "came from the need for a compact, constructivist typeface. Tetria combines the expression of simplicity of the 'norm' typefaces like DIN Mittelschrift with elements of Old Face typefaces which optimize legibility. It therefore contains old style figures and a larger stroke contrast, which makes the font legible even in smaller... 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

The idea for the Generis type system came to Erik Faulhaber while he was traveling in the USA. Seeing typefaces mixed together in a business district motivated him to create a new type system with interrelated forms. The first design scheme came about in 1997, following the space saving model of these American Gothics. Faulhaber then examined the demands of legibility and various communications... Read More

Linotype Gothic is part of a trio of three similar typefaces born out of forms from the American industrial age: News Gothic, News Gothic No. 2, and Linotype Gothic. All are legible sans serifs well suited for clear, contemporary business communication needs.News Gothic came first, originally designed in 1908 for the American Type Founders by Morris Fuller Benton. It is one of the... Read More

ITC Tabula is meant to be read. The design grew out of a study to create a font to set film subtitles. According to Julien Janiszewski, the face's Paris-based designer, “I set parameters for the design whereby the letters had to be able to hold up at very small sizes when set on film and yet must be able to be enlarged 2000 times to be read on a theatre screen.”The subtitle font was not... Read More