Microsoft C-Fonts

Post Reply New Topic

Does anyone have an experience with Microsoft’s newer C-Fonts? I mean the fonts with names like Calibri, Constantina, and Consolas. As a few of you here might know, I’m quite font obsessed. So when they came out I was quite stoked about them, but it seems they are actually better print fonts than screen fonts, despite their promise. Are they optimized for something larger than the usual screen-reading of 12-points, or did I do something wrong? Or are they really just a bit less defined than a lot of other fonts? It seems that Clear Type, the technology they are supposed to take advantage of, actually gets a bigger response from some of Microsoft’s older fonts like Verdana, Georgia, and Trebuchet MS…as well as some of the traditionals that are distributed with Microsoft Windows (Like Arial and Times New Roman.)

Thanks so much!

The way I see it, those C-fonts have these characteristics:
1. Less emphasis on manual hinting. That's why they look horrible without any type of anti-aliasing.
2. They are designed to look more natural than other screen fonts. Traditional screen fonts are usually much wider and have larger x-height.
Those fonts you mentioned get more response from ClearType because there are more pixels to play with. If you prefer wider typeface, "Segoe UI" may look better for a sans serif screen font. btw it's also part of the ClearType Fonts family.
3. There are more subtle details horizontally to take advantage of subpixels in LCD.
I think "Candara" best illustrates this. It's sans serif but the vertical strokes have varying width. I actually quite like it at small sizes. At larger size though, it looks a bit weird to me.

Are they optimized for larger size than 12pts?
I think yes, or more precisely they are optimized for higher DPI. Traditional serifs don't translate well to screen because the pixels are too large, they actually get in the way of readability. Even with increasing DPI and ClearType, it's still a long way before traditional print typefaces look good on screen. I think M$ tried to take advantage of the near-future situation by using less pronounced serifs on these fonts.

Ah, that first one described a lot to me. I didn’t realize that they weren’t hinted in the manner of the old Core Fonts for the Web package. I’ve always been big on X-Height, no pun intended, and I’ve long thought that Verdana and Georgia were some of the best screen reading fonts considering their specific design for that purpose, and they don’t look too bad with no anti-aliasing. Thank you for the suggestion about Segoe UI, but it apparently didn’t come with the Office Compatibility Pack.

Candara, to me, reminded me of Hermann Zapf’s Optima typeface.

I totally agree; Georgia being the one exception of course, as it was carefully drawn to be readable on screen. I think you replied before when I was complaining about Times New Roman being used so widely as a screen font. Thank you so much for replying by the way!

You are welcome. If you really want to try Segoe UI, I think it is bundled with Windows Live Essentials.

And yeah, I agreed. Times New Roman has too aggressive kerning and tracking to use as a screen font. It's pretty low on my list even for printing.

forget about MS fonts.

Two words: Hoefler & Frere-Jones

Technically I do have access to Frere-Jones' High Tower Text through a Microsoft product I bought - not to say its an ideal screen font, but if I were still printing stuff for school (all of it gets emailed) I would definently try to use that. HighTower is a draw by Frere-Jones, right?

I'm not a big fan of Times New Roman for much of anything either. It was specifically designed to make newsprint look 'blacker' so that it would have the apperance of having more information.

Interestingly enough, the London Times no longer uses it. I was a bit interested in Times Europa by Akira Kobayashi however.

We have Windows 2007 at work, and I think it uses something called Calibri. After a few years, I have thousands of fonts, so they all get confused by now...

I like those fonts as well.

I miss the old Chicago font for the Mac.

I remember some hobbyists released a couple of versions of Chicago for TrueType, but I'm pretty sure you can't use that commercially...and they really just don't look as good. I have an old Mac that I'll often use Chicago as a screen font for. I wish there was a release of all the old city fonts by Apple as outline fonts. Something like the old MS Core Fonts package.

Thanks for pointing me to Times Europa. It looks much more balanced to me. Too bad I don't think I'll buy any font soon. M$ should have bundled that instead of Times New Roman.

Ah, I didn't buy it either (Though I would never obtain a font illegally)

Fonts are very expensive, so I've learned to be content with what I have