Drawar

Uh... what kind of flier? The fonts you choose can greatly change the look, feel and impact of the flier.

Is it a professional event? a concert? a stand-up show? a theater show? informational?

What's the content of the flier? You really can't choose a font without knowing that information and much more.

Comic sans? har har.

Ban Comic Sans

I definitely agree with Boy. I can't recommend any fonts without actually knowing your client.

I do various things from blood drives to dance fliers, and I will also be using the fonts in a mockup for my website soon.

I should have probably used as a title "What fonts do you use? " I'm interested in more than just what fonts you'd recommend but what do you use when you're designing different things from backgrounds to headers for your site to fliers.

Like Boy said, it all depends on your audience or the feel you are going for. For websites though, I usually stay with sans-serif fonts because I think they are generally easier to read. I personally like Myriad Pro best, then Lucida Grande and Futura, which are all Mac fonts, except for Futura I think. I've heard Lucida Sans Unicode is an nice Myriad Pro equivalent for Windows, but I've never seen it used.

Just stick with something nice and readable :)

Nobes:
Lucida Sans Unicode is roughly Lucida Grande for Windows.

I'm personally a huge fan of Helvetica, and Garamond for print, but that's just me.

As for me, I always use Arial

I know you CAN do a google search but where are some places that you go to find your fonts?

I like this guy's fonts.

Trebuchet is the best font ever, and I'll fight anyone that says otherwise.

Trebuchet is the best font ever

Big Trebuchet fan here (at least for headings).

A font I discovered by using the What The Font tool on one of Brian's designs somewhere.

Stuart also did a great Web 2.0 font review back in November. He really has an eye for that kind of thing.

Also a Trebuchet fan. Most of my site utilizes Tre. I like that Avenir font too Teej. I'll snag it. I also like the grunge fonts.

Okay, this is odd. JulianBH just made the EXACT same suggestions I was about to as I read the opening post:

"Lucida Sans Unicode is roughly Lucida Grande for Windows.

I'm personally a huge fan of Helvetica, and Garamond for print".

Trebuchet is good. Helvetica is also good. It's frustrating that Helvetica isn't found on everyone's computers. It's great for graphics though, like in logos.

CK: Crazy crazy.
Great minds think alike.

Although they also say that fools never differ.

Mm, we're either both geniuses or idiots.

Geniuses. Definitely geniuses.

¬____¬

Try using Univers if you haven't already. It's one of my all-time favourites.

However, as mentioned before, it depends entirely on the audience.

My favorite is one called Keep On Truckin' :)

That Avenir is beautiful.

As for me, I've been using Helvetica Neue for everything. Any chance I get, I'll use it. It's gorgeous.

True story: I work at a very large, very serious multinational company and today I opened a report prepared by a senior officer to discover it was written in Comic Sans font.

I almost sprayed coffee out my nose. Comic Sans in an official business report.

I don't get it... what the hell is so funny about comic sans.... looks like a perfectly normal font to me... what am I missing?

When I was in school for Graphic Design... we had a student submit work that contained some text using BOTH Comic Sans and Sand.

The professor threw her board in the trash and told her to leave the classroom.

She didn't know what the problem was.

RightOn: LOL! That's one of those times when I would feel genuinely bad for the person but also be laughing out loud

The professor was NOTORIOUS for being a hard ass anyway, she just had no reason to be in that class if she couldn't see what the "problem" was.

He would walk around the room while we worked on our thumbnail sketches (I HATE THUMBNAILS!) holding a ruler. If your sketches didn't meet spec, he would snatch your paper off your desk, toss it in the trash and make you start over from scratch.

It made most of us quite the OCD freaks with our sketches.

(Full disclosure: I use Comic Sans in the 'thought bubbles' of the 'sketches' label on my blog)

carmodyarc, I can't speak for the others - I don't think Comic Sans should actually be banned - but I think the furor is over the completely inappropriate use of some fonts that people think will be 'more fun' than using a basic, readable font like Arial, Treb, etc.

I use CS in thought bubbles, where I'm trying to mimic handwriting, like in a comic. I don't have any extra fonts, and in Word that seems to be the best option for that specific purpose.

In the example I gave of using CS in a business report - in a small size, this font literally hurts the eyeballs if you are looking at a whole page of it (narrative text). It looks like chicken scratch. Unreadable and headache-inflicting. Not a good way to get your point across or your proposal accepted!

I use CS in thought bubbles, where I'm trying to mimic handwriting, like in a comic. I don't have any extra fonts, and in Word that seems to be the best option for that specific purpose.

That's the intended purpose of the typeface. I totally agree with you that the issue isn't the font itself but its abuse and misappropriation. People think that it's cute and adds character, but especially in a business setting it looks completely unprofessional. If you're going to type a whole document in CS you may as well just write it by hand.

Can't go wrong with Helvetica.
Or Garamond.
And lol @ comic sans.

For headlines with a touch of class, Garamond is the best font I've seen. I use it for my name on my personal site.

For readable narrative text - Univers, Helvetica, Treb, others have been mentioned above as well

Question - anyone know where I can get Optima? (umm, free)

While I agree with a few people above that Trebuchet rocks out with its... Lately, I find myself revolving most creations using Gill Sans, Myriad, and the always lovely Eras for my san-serifs, and Garamond or Perpetua for the serifs.