What are the most-viewed fonts in the world?

elliott
elliott Posts: 9
in History of Typography
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?
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Comments

  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    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.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    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.
  • lorcand
    lorcand Posts: 7
    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" / X
  • WillBennett
    WillBennett Posts: 6
    edited September 5
    The FHWA Series typefaces and Transport also deserve a mention. Both are used for roadway signage in numerous very populous countries.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,431
    I don't think Gill Sans is as common as it once was. Montserrat seems to be everywhere these days.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    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.
  • Grant Bowers
    Grant Bowers Posts: 4
    I think Futura might be at least a top 10 contender.
  • Albert Creus
    Albert Creus Posts: 10
    For non-latin I'd say:
    Noto
    Microsoft YaHei
    PingFang
  • davidm
    davidm Posts: 4
    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?
  • Simon Cozens
    Simon Cozens Posts: 740
    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.
    That and Johnson. In fact, Mark Ovenden's documentary "Two Types - The Faces of Britain" is worth a watch.
  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,436
    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.
  • Kent Lew
    Kent Lew Posts: 937
    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.
  • Micha Mirck
    Micha Mirck Posts: 23
    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.
  • sierragarcia
    sierragarcia Posts: 3
    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:
    Roboto  
    Arial  
    Helvetica  
    Times New Roman  
    Open Sans  
    San Francisco  
    Calibri  
    Noto  
    Lato  
    Segoe UI  
    Fira Sans  
    Inter  
    Poppins  
    Aptos  
    Nunito
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,734
    I thought the same thing.
  • sierragarcia
    sierragarcia Posts: 3
    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:
    Roboto  
    Arial  
    Helvetica  
    Times New Roman  
    Open Sans  
    San Francisco  
    Calibri  
    Noto  
    Lato  
    Segoe UI  
    Fira Sans  
    Inter  
    Poppins  
    Aptos  
    Nunito
    AI post?
    How do you know? Are you an AI detector?
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,431
    @sierragarciaPlease write a long story about fonts, involving world events of the past week.
  • sierragarcia
    sierragarcia Posts: 3
    @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?
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,431
    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.
  • John Butler
    John Butler Posts: 290
    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 AI
    then 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.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,431
    edited September 29
    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.
    That said, accusing every new user of being AI might get tiresome. Perhaps a friendlier approach would be to say something like, “Welcome to TypeDrawers! As you're new here, do you have any links to your portfolio or typeface designs you'd like to share?”

    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.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,126
    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.


  • Ermin Međedović
    Ermin Međedović Posts: 81
    The unsettling thought is if we’re now debating with a bot, not a human. It feels a bit dystopian.
  • Drawcard
    Drawcard Posts: 56
    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.
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,207
    edited October 1
    “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.


  • Eris Alar
    Eris Alar Posts: 454
    Ray Larabie said:
    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.
    That said, accusing every new user of being AI might get tiresome. Perhaps a friendlier approach would be to say something like, “Welcome to TypeDrawers! As you're new here, do you have any links to your portfolio or typeface designs you'd like to share?”

    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.
    A sponsor of a tech podcast I like claims to be able to fend off scraping by companies building LLMs, I have no idea if it would be feasible here as I expect it would be expensive. Apparently lots of scrapers don’t respect robots.txt either. 

  • lorcand
    lorcand Posts: 7
    The New Yorker famously described Matthew Carter as "the most widely read man in the world" ... perhaps now that might be Steve Matteson?

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