Favourite Fonts?

[Wiggo]

Arvo is mine top favourite

[Vaalberg]

Originally Posted by BionicGecko

My favourite serif font is ITC Garamond Light (love that rounded O). For sans serif I really like Corporative Alt. Unfortunately neither of those are free.

I didn't know ITC Garamond Light, it's pretty awesome
Thank you for the discovery

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Vaalberg

I didn't know ITC Garamond Light, it's pretty awesome
Thank you for the discovery

If you have to up the weight because it's too light for eInk, then why not get the regular non-light version of ITC Garamond? Yes you may still want to up the weight, but not nearly as much.

[BionicGecko]

Originally Posted by Vaalberg

I didn't know ITC Garamond Light, it's pretty awesome
Thank you for the discovery

Glad you like it! I actually discovered this font in a paper book. I got so enthralled by it that I reached out to the publisher to find out what that beautiful font was. They didn’t know (or were unwilling to investigate) as the book had been out of print for over a decade, so in the end I tracked it through an online font recognizer; there were a few false positives but finally I nailed it!

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you have to up the weight because it's too light for eInk, then why not get the regular non-light version of ITC Garamond? Yes you may still want to up the weight, but not nearly as much.

I agree it’s very light for eInk, but it’s actually not quite the same in its regular form for some reason; I tested several fonts flagged as possible candidates by that online recognizer by comparing snippets copied over from the printed book, and only the light version was a perfect match. Something about the way the lowercase o looks, almost squished vertically.

[Vaalberg]

Originally Posted by BionicGecko

Glad you like it! I actually discovered this font in a paper book. I got so enthralled by it that I reached out to the publisher to find out what that beautiful font was. They didn’t know (or were unwilling to investigate) as the book had been out of print for over a decade, so in the end I tracked it through an online font recognizer; there were a few false positives but finally I nailed it!

Oh wow. I've never seen this font on a paper book. There is something really satisfying about it, everything look perfectly balanced, I love it. There aren't many serif fonts that are pleasant to read and that I'm able to read over the long term. Guess I found my match!

Font recognizers like MyFonts are pretty data-rich but rarely give the right font first. I think they sponsor similar fonts that can be bought on their site before giving really accurate results. Anyway, thanks again for the discovery

[DNSB]

We used to use some of ITC's fonts at one place I did some consulting for. Personally, I preferred the ITC Garamond Std Book set for reading in print. However, please note that these fonts are not free. A print and electronic docs license is not cheap. And yes, one of their customers ran into issues when they violated the license terms by releasing a new version of an ebook and not paying for those licenses (a free update is not an issue, a new edition which costs the old owners is an issue).

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

We used to use some of ITC's fonts at one place I did some consulting for. Personally, I preferred the ITC Garamond Std Book set for reading in print.

I like Garamond. However it needs decent print quality and doesn't seem so good for ebooks as paper.

There are plenty of reasonable free fonts now for ebooks and people may not select "Publisher Font" or else use an app that has no choices, or only built-in choices, or ignores embedded font. One needs to be more careful and conservative with paper. No free updates for a start!

[FourOhFour]

I've been using IBM Plex Serif. (GitHub or the annoying marketing page)

[DNSB]

Personally, I don't like slab serif fonts such as IBM Plex Serif (look at the top of the capital T or the bottom feet of most of the letters).

[xyclonei]

I find Fern Text (paid font) to be quite pleasing to the eye.

[jackm8]

Originally Posted by DNSB

We used to use some of ITC's fonts at one place I did some consulting for. Personally, I preferred the ITC Garamond Std Book set for reading in print. However, please note that these fonts are not free. A print and electronic docs license is not cheap. And yes, one of their customers ran into issues when they violated the license terms by releasing a new version of an ebook and not paying for those licenses (a free update is not an issue, a new edition which costs the old owners is an issue).

When looking for free Garamond, there's always EB Garamond. Not only one of the best Garamond versions available, but one of the best fonts available overall. Sadly, the author of the font appears to have abandoned work on it. It's fully usable for ebooks and for normal text, with italics and regular fonts in 8px and 12px form. 8 and 12 forms based on different sizes from 1592 Garamond specimen, but it's missing bolds for other uses.

It's available both on Adobe Fonts and Google Fonts pages with extra weights that were made by someone else, but only in it's 8px form. I'd encourage everyone to go for initial release instead. It includes initials and small caps versions, and off course, the glorious EB Garamond 12 in regular and italic versions.

Links:
http://www.georgduffner.at/ebgaramond/index.html
https://bitbucket.org/georgd/eb-garamond/downloads/

Btw, some people really don't like ITC Garamond: https://designobserver.com/article.php?id=2577

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by xyclonei

I find Fern Text (paid font) to be quite pleasing to the eye.

Definitely beautiful, but maybe a bit too busy for reading. It does remind me of fonts I've seen fairly often in physical books.

Originally Posted by jackm8

Btw, some people really don't like ITC Garamond: https://designobserver.com/article.php?id=2577

A lot of the ITC typefaces suffer from the "giant x-height equals more readable" assumption. They might be more readable, but I feel they are less enjoyable to read.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Personally, I don't like slab serif fonts such as IBM Plex Serif (look at the top of the capital T or the bottom feet of most of the letters).

I find slab serif to be really ugly.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by xyclonei

I find Fern Text (paid font) to be quite pleasing to the eye.

That's actually a pretty good looking font.

[Sirtel]

I've tried lots of fonts. LexiaDama is still my absolute favorite on a Kobo - not because it's beautiful, but because for some reason it feels just right for me. ChareInk is the close second (I actually preferred it on a Kindle, where you can't fine-tune line height and boldness level as well as on a Kobo), and DejaVu Serif Eink is the third (I used it on my Nook where you can't sideload fonts, so I had to embed it in the books).

Many of the others mentioned here have too large line spacing for my taste (I prefer tight lines).

These days I've mostly stopped trying new fonts. I guess I'll stick to the three mentioned above, depending on the device I'm reading on (currently only Kobos).