Ascender Corporation, "specialists in multilingual and custom font development," has released a study on the use of typefaces on the front pages of America's top daily newspapers.

"Newspapers have new challenges designing and publishing both print and electronic versions" said Bill Davis, the study's author. "Each medium has different font formats and technologies to create and render fonts with optimal legibility. The jury is still out on the best approach to create electronic editions of newspapers in a manner that preserves the look & feel the print edition, particularly regarding maintaining brand identity."

The study found that the 10 most popular typeface families are: Franklin Gothic, Poynter, Futura, Helvetica, Century, Utopia, Times, Nimrod, Bureau and Interstate. Many of these typefaces were designed specifically for newspapers – the letterforms include features for legibility that address the challenges of reproduction on newsprint.

Additionally the study found each of the top seven daily newspapers use typefaces specifically designed or commissioned on their behalf. Further, 35 of the top 100 daily newspapers use a custom typeface or modified font in addition to retail, off-the-shelf fonts. The use of custom fonts allows publications to strengthen their brand and give a distinct, exclusive quality to their publication.

The fonts used on the front pages in newspapers come from a variety of sources including large, established type foundries, smaller independent type foundries and individual type designers who specialize in custom newspaper fonts.

>Study of Newspaper Fonts Released [Ascender Corporation, via editorsweblog.org]