Geeze I wish Typeface technology would mature to NOT depend on arcane typeface names, so that we could better know what’s in a font just by using an accurately descriptive font name, or maybe even just developing an all-purpose typeface engine that lets us ask for the qualities we want – oh, Adobe bought Ares FontChameleon, a program that did just that, it built a unique, special specified set of font typefaces on demand, one program producing an infinite variety of font typeface qualities, and Adobe buried it so they could keep charging royalties on specific individually authored fonts.

Feedback wise, these fonts in today’s SOS giveaway seem functional but immature, duplicating and replicating what already exists, not moving forward, not like, for example, the Noto typeface family that has recently moved typefaces to the next level – “Noto” = “NO TOfu”, a growing attempt at a complete set of complete font typefaces that would not cause a display to put an empty box in a missing character’s place, like a box of Tofu – the Noto project is maybe 1/3rd of the way toward presenting all known ~160,000 characters with a similar coordinated presentation, shape, size, ascenders, descenders, line qualities, and so on.

Computer-display-aware typefaces of the 1990s, like Lucida by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes, and Verdana by Matthew Carter ( handwriting style by Thomas Rickner ), have always appeared easy to read on screen, because they were specifically designed for modern display screens ( versus Apple’s original pixelated screens ).

And who can beat the classical print qualities of of Optima sans for headlines, and Palatino serif, by the god of fonts, Hermann Zapf, in the 1950s?

Or Times New Roman by Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent in the 1930s, fitting as many characters on a newspaper page as possible and still being readable?

There’s so much more font history at so many places, like [ https :// 99designs. com/blog/design-history-movements/history-of-digital-fonts/ ] and so on.

I personally believe a font typeface should be invisible and present the content of the written word, not call attention to itself, not demand scrutiny of it’s own forms – for example, once I learned of the Piegnot font typeface by Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron, also known as A M Cassandre, in the 1930s, supposedly “.. the noble classical shapes of the alphabet and discard the lower case forms …”, I now cannot see Peignot without inspecting it’s letterforms individually, forgetting the meaning of the word it was displaying, I see it everywhere, on taxis, on movie titles, on menus, and it’s always distracting for me – see also the MTM Mary Tyler More show, for example ( that the designer of the font had life-long depression and committed suicide seems to complete the story of a font typeface that struggles to communicate – no judgement, only sorrow ).

Hence the identifier: DISPLAY font – ‘display’ fonts have characteristics that communicate something aside from the content of the words.

My personal bugaboo is angled crossbars, they always lead my eye up or down, off the word, not through the word, not to the next word, and they prevent easy reading for me, see examples at [ https :// www. myfonts. com/tags/angled+crossbar/ ] and other places.

Hey, one of my best friends wrote a book, and chose the Bodoni font typeface for the print, designed by Giambattista Bodoni in the 1700s, of all things, and I then could not read it in hardcover, doh ( I could read my editing copy on my own computer using my own font choice ).

So, on the one hand, thank you, [ https :// eldamar-studio. com/ ] for more fonts, my 60,000+ and growing collection thanks you.

Oddly, my Amazon Kindle Windows software comes closest to allowing me to redraw and reflow text with a variety of font typeface characteristics, on demand, including color and contrast with the background.

Alternatives: see the endless free fonts findable with any number of web searches, including fully-authored high-quality, original-quality giveaways at ‘legitimate’ original type ‘foundries’, just subscribe at their web sites, and they then tease you with freebies throughout the year to get you to come back.

But at some point, pick one that works, and go with it.

Unless, as others may need, we are creating a unique piece of communication art, and we need the lettering to stand out, unique unto itself, as MTM Mary Tyler More sort of did by re-introducing Peignot after many years of absence from the public eye, and it appeared fresh once more.

It’s hard for me to succinctly classify the font typefaces in this 250 collection, but they seem to be mostly text fonts, not display fonts, and like any fonts, we have to try them to see if they are comfortable for our purposes.

Eldamar Studio is a bountiful resource.

Thanks for letting us explore this and share.
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I just wanted to say, “Thank you,” for this free bundle of fonts. As a contracting designer, these will really come in handy! Very kind of you!
L. Stevens