Fonts I Can’t Live Without As A Designer | by Sharanya | Feb, 2023

Won’t lie, I was very scared of exploring fonts when I started out as a designer.

What if I mess up the readability ? What if this font is hated by a user ? What if the kerning is trash ? and blah blah blah…

I wanted to play it safe, so I went with Roboto, Inter & SF Pro.

The absolutely boring bunch of fonts that add no personality to your designs whatsoever.

But over the past few months of downloading the most random fonts off the most sketchy and looks-like-it-will-give-my-PC-virus type of websites, I have learned a lot.

Learned so much that I have my own arsenal of fonts now, the ones I can’t design without.

I have categorized them into Sans Serif, Serif & Display, and left out Slab Serif because it’s ugly, and nobody uses Script fonts much nowadays.

These are very clean and modern typefaces without decorative lines at the end of each letter.

You’ll mostly be using them for digital applications like websites and mobile apps.

Neue Haas Grotesk Display

This is the original Helvetica font, before it was rebranded in 1983. Absolutely love it to death, also added this to my portfolio site as well.

Helvetica

This is the Neue Haas Grotesk font, after it was rebranded in 1983. Added it again for the culture and definitely not to drag the list further.

Gilroy

This one is my most used font right now for android app designs — it’s geometric and has too many weights to play with.

Euclid Circular A

There are many under the Euclid family tree, but I started using this one after coming across Metamask’s design system. Or was it Circular B ?

Arial

A classic font that works well in both all caps and for display purposes, I use this often for my Medium thumbnails.

Apercu

I really like how the descenders sort of drag down below the baseline on this one.

Really that’s all it took for me to like this font.

These are the classic and traditional typefaces with decorative lines at the end of each letter.

Often used for print materials like books, newspapers, and magazines.

SK Femme Fatale

I really love the cultural background this font brings, it’s a representation of women in cinema from the 50s. Also it is so grooovy and waaavy.

Nautica

This font is so thin and curvy that I’ll sneakily slap it onto posters, for writing some obvious stuff that I don’t want the audience to notice instantly.

Mitten

Okay so I’m not sure if this belongs here, the size of the glyphs are confusing.

I love to use it for writing brand names in extremely large sizes, which brings a very calming elegance.

ED Piedmont

Very unevenly spaced, it breaks the readability but looks very good too.

These are the decorative and attention-grabby typefaces often used for headlines or titles.

These are ideal for designs that want to make a bold statement and convey a specific mood or aesthetic.

Wriggle

I have a thing for fonts that are very beautiful to the eyes, can’t really point what about this one interests me specifically.

Poster Compressed

As the name suggests, this is my go-to for posters where the main focus element is overlapped towards the front in a retro 80s minimalist vibe.

Newake

It’s very bold, like very thick almost on the verge of becoming a Slab Serif. Maybe it is already.

I don’t know man, not the best at categorizing my font collections.

Gaistro

This one screams minimalism and the uneven weight on this looks amazing for hotel brochures & pamphlets.

I am still exploring more fonts, this is a massive rabbit hole under the umbrella of design, and I am sure I’ll have to update this list soon.

I might as well learn how to use the pen tool to create my own fonts someday, looking at the way I’m falling in love with typography.

Hi there 👋🏻 I’m Sharanya — a freelance UI/UX designer writing about design here.

Check my free digital products over on my Gumroad.

You can find me on Twitter, Dribbble & LinkedIn or reach out directly via email for freelance projects!