I work at a consulting engineering firm and write a lot of reports that are read by the public. I have an opportunity to recommend a different font for all of our written documents and am looking for something more modern/fresh than Times New Roman. Also open to recommendations for purpose specific communities about typography/fonts.
Intel’s Clear Sans.
IBM’s Plex, I’m particularly partial to their condensed sans.
Fira Sans is a good generic recommendation, their mono is again worth considering.
Adobe’s Source family (sans, serif, mono) is another inoffensive, safe choice.
erewhon is a modern workhorse serif that pairs well with all the sans fonts above. It’s derived from Adobe’s Utopia, which is used in quite a few newspapers (clear and legible without taking too much space).
STIX Two was specifically designed to replace Times New Roman in scientific + mathematical publications, if you’re looking for a font that’s different but familiar to Times New Roman, I could not recommend it enough.
Charis SIL was originally designed for laser printers and later modified for use in linguistics, it’s essentially a serif version of Verdana (same designer too). As with all the other fonts mentioned, very broad character set support.
The TeX font catalogue is a treasure trove in general.
Edit: almost forgot, the Libertinus family also comes recommended for a more ‘professional’ look.
This is super helpful! Fun fact - Erewhon is also a small chain of very high end markets in Los Angeles. Now I’m going to have to research what this word means and who came up with it first.
For regular text, something sans-serif that is not fixed width like Calibri.
For code or numbers, a fixed width sans-serif font like Consolas or Inconsolata.
Serif fonts definitely have their place, far away from technical documents.
It feels like low effort to use the default Office font when there are so many other options, but in my sans serif font tests Calibri ended up looking the best so far. I really didn’t want to like it! Curious where you think serif fonts belong? I don’t know shit about fonts/graphic design…
FYI, the new official Office default is Aptos. I’ve been making work docs with it for a few weeks and I have to admit, it looks really clean and technical.
I write mostly for web, so I don’t use serif a lot. I think it’s still fine for use with headings.
If your reports are destined for print, it still belongs, imo.
What counts as print these days though? When I first started working, we’d get literal boxes shipped to us with 1,000+ page documents inside. Now it’s a cloud link that opens with a PDF reader. Does that still count as print? Genuinely curious, because I see conflicting advice depending on if its print or not.
I prefer serif fonts in fiction and humanities, but maybe that’s just my STEM bias showing.
Calibri is not actually the default font anymore! In M365, at least. Granted, it will be a long time before it’s not recognized as such.
My company uses Roboto. I like it a lot, but I think it’s gotten pretty popular. Do you know about fonts.google.com? Huge library that you can apply filters to, makes it really easy to browse.
I’ve recently become a proponent of Atkinson Hyperlegible (while discovering I have some vision issues). Not sure if it’s appropriate in your industry, but the improvements to accessibility are hard to argue with.
improvements to accessibility are hard to argue with.
It’s pretty good, yes. But other fonts not specifically designed for this fare quite well in contrast to what you’d believe: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/garethfordwilliams_dont-believe-the-type-axe-con-2021-activity-6904510195884445696-93xG
Our designs have to comply with ADA, so accessibility is definitely a familiar consideration. This looks like any other professional looking sans-serif font, so if it’s more accessible for low vision/vision impaired people, all the better! I like that uppercase i and lowercase L are distinguishable, which is a personal peeve I have with some sans serif fonts. Thanks for the suggestion!
It’s hard to explain exactly why but switching my ereader over made a night and day difference in my comprehension and reading speed.
This one is going to be an unconventional one but I do love the Ubuntu font and I try to sneak it into some documents I write.
Personally I’m a huge fan of the Kepler Project font. I got hooked on it when I started writing papers in LaTeX.
Thanks for the font rec. I despise Word but have colleagues who would be unable to function in something like LaTeX. Oh well…
There is an OTF version, it’s just not bundled w/ anything by default as far as I’m aware.
Available here: https://ctan.org/pkg/kpfonts-otf?lang=en
