Looking for Beautiful Examples of Popular Fonts in Use. Any Recommendations?

WhichFontShouldIUse

Hi!

I am looking for either a book or a website that illustrates popular fonts in use, categorized by type of usage like titles.  I'm essentially looking for something exactly like fontsinuse.com.  The problem with fontsinuse.com is that I really don't like the examples that they use.  I don't think they really illustrate the best use of the fonts.  The samples frequently aren't that beautiful so I just pass on the font when I shouldn't.

Can anyone recommend a good book or website that shows samples of fonts in use?

Thank you for any guidance.

Stephen Coles

I'm sorry to hear you’re not happy with the uses you’re seeing on Fonts In Use. We post everything that is submitted, so the range of styles varies widely. Some of the most notable uses are highlighted as Staff Picks. Have you tried that view? Here are the Staff Picks for Film/Video design.

Florian Hardwig

In terms of books, there is Peter Dawson’s Field Guide to Typography, dedicated to “Typefaces in the Urban Landscape”. It was published by Thames & Hudson in 2013. By nature of the medium, it’s far more focused than Fonts In Use, featuring examples of 125 popular typefaces. This might be beneficial for your purpose.

On the other hand, the type design scene is bustling, and there have been so many interesting new releases in recent years. A book will always be outdated in almost no time, especially if it wants to cover the “classics”, too. For comparison, Fonts In Use currently documents in-use examples for more than 6,500 different typefaces, hundreds of which were released in the past few years. About half of the examples (8,000+) in the Collection show work that was made after 2013.

Yes, as an archive, our site is also about quantity. As Stephen pointed out, we offer tools to filter for something more specific. There is no filter named “quality”, because one designer’s trash is another designer’s treasure. In addition to the mentioned Staff Picks, you can sort by popularity among the visitors, see e.g. the most liked Sports design or most viewed Packaging design. Or use the advanced search with queries involving tags like “iconic use” or “high profile”. For some cases, there are Sets, see e.g. Avant Garde Used Right. Compiling Sets (hand-picked albums of Uses) is a feature available to registered users.

Please note that TypeDrawers is a real-name forum.

Claudio Piccinini

The uses are very varied, and you can also contribute to Fonts in Use, if you think it is lacking in certain cathegories of use.
As it is, I think it’s just fantastic: clearly not all of the uses have the same degree of suitability/significance, but it’s just great to navigate, and it can expand/adjust/improve also by the effort of users.

Ben Noe

I'm late to this thread... but have you checked out https://fontsinuse.com ?

Nick Shinn

Even for well-established fonts, you will only find faux usage at online distributors. 
The reason is that they require formal written permission, which is generally too much of a hassle.