Font Goodness: Gentium (A Typeface for the Nations)

SIL releases Gentium — an amazing font with astounding aspirations — for FREE.

Gentium is a typeface family designed to enable the diverse ethnic groups around the world who use the Latin script to produce readable, high-quality publications. It supports a wide range of Latin-based alphabets and includes glyphs that correspond to all the Latin ranges of Unicode.

The design is intended to be highly readable, reasonably compact, and visually attractive. The additional ‘extended’ Latin letters are designed to naturally harmonize with the traditional 26 ones. Diacritics are treated with careful thought and attention to their use. Gentium also supports both ancient and modern Greek, including a number of alternate forms. These fonts were originally the product of two years of research and study by the designer at the University of Reading, England, as part of an MA program in Typeface Design.

* drools *

It's not only ground-breaking in terms of scope... it's also a lovely, lovely typeface.

I've got mine... do you have yours?

Meme: Desert Island Fonts

So. Design deity Andy Budd (who's just plain cool) started this whole "Desert Island Fonts" thing... and I could have just ignored the meme, but I love fonts... love love love them. There's just something so magical about how the curve of an "a" or the swoosh of a "Q" can convey so much.

At any rate, here's are my "six fonts I'd use if I could only own six"... and like almost everyone else, I'm referring to font families which can actually include dozens of typefaces. But who's keeping score, right?

Helvetica Neue

Adobe Garamond Pro

P22 Edward Hopper

Stephanie Marie

Officina

Voluta Script Pro

Of course, this isn't really fair. I have 1500 fonts in my library, and choosing just six comes down to my choosing what would get me the most mileage... without regard to the 20 or so fonts whose attack I find wholly enchanting — if only _because_ they can't be used so widely.