By signcraft
Posted on Monday, November 6th, 2023
We’ve been asking sign designers about their favorite fonts—both long time and current ones—recently. David Showalter [David Design, Bryan, Ohio] is no stranger to SignCraft readers, and here are a few of the fonts he relies on for his clean, highly readable sign designs:
“Caslon Black is one of my favorites,” says David. “I’ve used it for 30 years. It makes a great heading. For the secondary copy, I often use Century Schoolbook Medium. They work really well together.”
“This is Caslon Black paired with Optima.”
“Here I’ve used Mike Stevens’s Phoenix for the primary copy with Optima for the secondary copy.”
“Another pair that work really well together is Optima Bold and Optima Regular. They are very elegant letter styles. I use Optima Regular often for secondary copy because it is so tasteful and easy to read. It’s very nice for secondary copy that doesn’t need to shout.”
“Another workhorse that I’ve used forever is Standard Bold Condensed. You can extend it as much as you want, or you can leave it at 100 percent. It looks terrific either way. When you pull it, it gets really blocky and looks great. It’s very readable, too. There are other fonts out there that are very similar. It’s one of those letter styles that has been around forever because it’s so easy to read and has such impact.”
“That’s Standard Bold Condensed for the main copy, with Optima above it and Mike Stevens’s Stix below it.”
“Back in sign painting days, we often used a regular block letter, then paired it with casual. It still works great. I use my hand-lettered ‘Plug Casual’ a lot on the showcards I do for hot rod guys. It’s a fast, single stroke letter that you can knock out quickly. And like all hand lettering, it is unique because everything is done in type today.”
“I sometimes use scripts for headings. The Mike Stevens scripts both make great headings. Mike’s font collection is hard to beat. They’re really versatile. I used his Vasona Sho-Card on the Hair Station.”
“This is a good example of a simple commercial sign done with just two fonts—Marquis and Mike Stevens’s Perpetua. I first saw Marquis in Randy Howe’s work and asked him where to get it. I’ve discovered of several great letterstyles from Randy’s work.”
