If I Had to Use Five Fonts for the Rest of My Life, These Would Be Them

Also a Few Thoughts on What AI is Lacking

(Before we get started, I’m going to use the word “font” here instead of “typeface”. I know it’s a touchy subject in the design community, but I want to LIVE.)

Last night over dinner with some old co-workers, we discussed the ever-evolving topic of AI. To be honest, I don’t pay too much attention to the image creation powers of AI. Perhaps I should, so I stay with the times, but from what I’ve seen come out of it in terms of true graphic design, I don’t find a lot of use for it. Beyond my personal issues with creating art using AI, what use do I have with a flattened image that I can’t edit if I wanted to? So today I wanted to see how AI handles fonts, particularly if its given a prompt with a specific time era.

Here’s what I typed in:

Here’s what it generated:

This AI-generated “font headline” referenced the font Costa Mala, which was created in 2020. And there lies my whole frustration with AI design work. It’s not personal. It doesn’t have the intelligence or creativity to realize that if someone wants a can design that looks like the 1930s, then the fonts used should be from the 1930s.

Enough of my thoughts on AI. We all have them, and I’m sure we’re all having similar conversations on how to navigate this new world.

Back to real-life fonts…ahh.

The history of fonts dates back to the Song Dynasty in China, circa 1039, when a person named Bi Sheng created movable type using porcelain. Fast forward through the decades, and those pieces of type then became wood… then metal (tin type)… and now we have keyboards at our fingertips to output nearly any style of fonts we can dream up. (I just really breezed through that history. This site does a fascinating take on the history!)

With the sentiment of wanting the fonts we all use to be purposeful and have meaning behind them for our projects, I thought I’d share the 5 fonts I’d use for the rest of my life because I think they’re that good.