What are the most-viewed fonts in the world?
elliott
Posts: 9
What fonts get the most eyeballs, daily, in 2024? Obviously it's impossible to answer this question conclusively, but surely we can make an educated guess based on the popularity of certain technologies/platforms used for setting type (for screen, print, or something else).
Within the bounds of Latin fonts (I'm not familiar enough with other scripts, but I'd love to hear from people who are), here are a few that I imagine must be "up there" in terms of daily views:
Helvetica
Arial
Univers
Times
Gill Sans
SF Pro
Roboto
Georgia
Verdana
What do you think?
Within the bounds of Latin fonts (I'm not familiar enough with other scripts, but I'd love to hear from people who are), here are a few that I imagine must be "up there" in terms of daily views:
Helvetica
Arial
Univers
Times
Gill Sans
SF Pro
Roboto
Georgia
Verdana
What do you think?
0
Comments
-
Certainly those are going to be among the higher ones.
However, you seem to have left off Calibri, which as the default font in documents produced by Microsoft Office apps from 2007–24 would seem to be huge. Plenty of other Windows apps default to Calibri as well.
Moving forward, the new Aptos is the Microsoft default since this past spring.4 -
I think in terms of common usage, Univers, Verdana and Georgia are all a step down from the others on your list. Very common, but not at the same level of daily person-views.0
-
A couple of years ago Fonts Ninja suggested 65% of websites were using one of Roboto, Open Sans, Montserrat and Lato (ROMoLa?)
Fonts Ninja on X: "65% of websites are using one of these 4 typefaces. Typefaces are decisive design assets and graphic designers need to easily discover new ones. https://t.co/vFIDkeTdbS" / X2 -
The FHWA Series typefaces and Transport also deserve a mention. Both are used for roadway signage in numerous very populous countries.
1 -
I don't think Gill Sans is as common as it once was. Montserrat seems to be everywhere these days.0
-
Some of this depends on where you are.
Gill Sans is VERY common in the UK, many times the usage level of the USA. As I recently said to a lawyer who happened to have the same name, it is practically the unofficial national typeface of the UK.2 -
I think Futura might be at least a top 10 contender.0
-
For non-latin I'd say:
Noto
Microsoft YaHei
PingFang
0 -
If we're talking quantity of words read each day, I'm going to be cheeky and suggest BBC Reith and Amazon Bookerly, but there are many newspaper sites with huge visitor numbers and long engagement which must be high on the list.
In terms of reach, it surely is the ubiquitous UI families: SF, Segoe, and Roboto?1 -
Thomas Phinney said:Some of this depends on where you are.
Gill Sans is VERY common in the UK, many times the usage level of the USA. As I recently said to a lawyer who happened to have the same name, it is practically the unofficial national typeface of the UK.2 -
Thomas Phinney said:I think in terms of common usage, Univers, Verdana and Georgia are all a step down from the others on your list. Very common, but not at the same level of daily person-views.
Verdana and Georgia plummeted (and Times and Arial sunk too), I'd assume, when @font-face CSS arrived.
0 -
Craig Eliason said:
Verdana and Georgia plummeted (and Times and Arial sunk too), I'd assume, when @font-face CSS arrived.
And when Microsoft replaced them as defaults with the Calibri/Cambria and the C-series.
0 -
I understand that Heiti and Songti do well in China, just like Kruti Dev and Mangal in India. I think it’s about the scale of your perception. I was in Turin, and there I mostly saw Helvetica and very often Arial, while Germany seems to be filled with Cooper Black.2
-
The fonts that people see the most are the ones used on popular websites, computers, and documents. These fonts are picked a lot because they are easy to read and are already on most devices. Here is a list of some of the fonts people see the most around the world:
RobotoArialHelveticaTimes New RomanOpen SansSan FranciscoCalibriNotoLatoSegoe UIFira SansInterPoppinsAptosNunito0 -
sierragarcia said:The fonts that people see the most are the ones used on popular websites, computers, and documents. These fonts are picked a lot because they are easy to read and are already on most devices. Here is a list of some of the fonts people see the most around the world:
RobotoArialHelveticaTimes New RomanOpen SansSan FranciscoCalibriNotoLatoSegoe UIFira SansInterPoppinsAptosNunito5 -
I thought the same thing.
0 -
James Hultquist-Todd said:sierragarcia said:The fonts that people see the most are the ones used on popular websites, computers, and documents. These fonts are picked a lot because they are easy to read and are already on most devices. Here is a list of some of the fonts people see the most around the world:
RobotoArialHelveticaTimes New RomanOpen SansSan FranciscoCalibriNotoLatoSegoe UIFira SansInterPoppinsAptosNunito1 -
@sierragarciaPlease write a long story about fonts, involving world events of the past week.2
-
@Ray Larabie Why would I? Why are you defending his comment "AI Post?"
What I wrote is what I knew, can you please explain why is everyone so upset about it?
1 -
I also thought it was an AI post. I'm sure you can understand why some of us are careful about new users' posts. Bot activity is skyrocketing on forums lately.0
-
there is an AI voiced podcast about fonts from someone with the same name, and the podcast's description contains many links to a site that I won't link to here. if I were a cynical person I might think someone were trying to build an SEO strategy around a niche via backlinks from amazon and eventually typedrawers as 30% of the network requests to the site linked from that podcast are for ads. fortunately, I am not a cynic9
-
At this point, could we please amend the TD rules?
Proposed new verbiage:
—
If you either• are an AI; or• post or reply in a way indistinguishable from an AIthen you are immediately banned from posting here, and we reserve the power to remove your posts and all traces of you.—I’m mildly hesitant about the second condition, because this is an English language forum, and some users do use machine translation that comes across rather AI-like, but I’m on balance more fed up with cyberbollocks.2 -
Oh, I’m a cynic alright Definitely seems like SEO building. When you do a web search for the user name, some forum pages come up where links are posted to the same sites.
4 -
Have you heard of the “dead internet theory”? If not, I encourage you to look it up. While its origins are somewhat conspiratorial, I believe there's some truth to it; the percentage of fake internet users is likely higher than most of us realize. And I'm pretty certain that the majority of the internet is fake content.
One tricky aspect is that many bot accounts are actually human-monitored, making them harder to detect. For example, that defensive reply we saw earlier seemed quite human-like. I think an important aspect of the business is monitoring engagement driving posts to make sure they're working and to fend off accusers.
I think a real user who is accused will have a plausible explanation rather than simply getting defensive like this one did.
Sierra's post was obviously crude and easy to spot, but things are about to get more sophisticated. Just last week, there were significant upgrades to a popular open-source language model. These models often lack ethical safeguards, meaning a bot could potentially read our entire forum, create a plausible user persona, and make convincing posts to drive engagement.
John made a good point about machine translation sometimes being mistaken for bot activity. However, there are other clues we can look out for:- New users without links to design portfolios, foundry sites, or other professional pages that real designers typically have.
- New users making comments that seem designed to increase engagement rather than contribute meaningfully.
I admit, it's tempting to troll them. I've seen cases where you can trick bots into writing Javascript in responses, or sitcom scripts. I have to admit it would be a hoot if it worked, but maybe not on Typedrawers.
I think there will be a day, very soon, when we'll have to shut the doors to new users that nobody can vouch for.1 -
sierragarcia said:can you please explain why is everyone so upset about it?Well, your post began with"The fonts that people see the most are the ones used on popular websites, computers, and documents. These fonts are picked a lot because they are easy to read and are already on most devices."That seemed like a very obvious and needless restatement of basic facts about the topic, and this is what resembled the behavior of AI text generators.
2 -
The unsettling thought is if we’re now debating with a bot, not a human. It feels a bit dystopian.
0 -
Getting back on topic - @elliott Google Fonts has a cool analytics page which lists the most served fonts from their catalogue, across various time periods: https://fonts.google.com/analytics
While it's not all encompassing, it gives a decent insight into one of the major players.2 -
“Viewing fonts” is quite different from reading typography.
It’s only typographers and type drawers who view fonts!
The “most read” typeface (Latin script) might still be Times, on account of all the books printed with it. (Printed book still outpace ebooks, by a three to one margin.)
I spend more time reading books than reading online, and, given my choice of reading material, I would guess that Bembo and Garamond are the typefaces I spend most time looking at.
1
Categories
- All Categories
- 40 Introductions
- 3.7K Typeface Design
- 793 Font Technology
- 1K Technique and Theory
- 608 Type Business
- 443 Type Design Critiques
- 535 Type Design Software
- 30 Punchcutting
- 135 Lettering and Calligraphy
- 82 Technique and Theory
- 53 Lettering Critiques
- 478 Typography
- 300 History of Typography
- 113 Education
- 65 Resources
- 491 Announcements
- 78 Events
- 105 Job Postings
- 148 Type Releases
- 159 Miscellaneous News
- 268 About TypeDrawers
- 53 TypeDrawers Announcements
- 115 Suggestions and Bug Reports