Make Your Print Project Shine With Classic Serif Fonts (2024)

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These serif fonts give print projects a timeless beauty and legibility

Jacci Howard Bear

Writer

A graphic designer, writer, and artist who writes about and teaches print and web design.

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Updated on June 4, 2022

Reviewed by

Jessica Kormos

Reviewed byJessica Kormos

Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College

Jessica Kormos is a writer and editor with 15 years' experience writing articles, copy, and UX content for Tecca.com, Rosenfeld Media, and many others.

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Design

Note

Not every version is suitable for body copy, headlines, captions andweb pages.However, members of the same family are designed to work well together. This list is presented in alphabetical order; no one font is considered better than another.

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Baskerville

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A classic dating from the 1750s, Baskerville and New Baskerville serif fonts with their many variations work well for both text and display use. Baskerville is a transitional serif style.

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Bodoni

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Bodoni is a classic text face styled after the work of Giambattista Bodoni. Some Bodoni font versions are, perhaps, too heavy or carry too much contrast in thick and thin strokes for body text, but they work well as display type. Bodoni is a modern serif style.

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Caslon

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Benjamin Franklin chose Caslon for the first printing of the American Declaration of Independence. Fonts based on the typefaces of William Caslon are good, readable choices for text.

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Century

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The best known of the Century family is New Century Schoolbook. All the Century faces are considered highly legible serif fonts, suitable not only for children's textbooks but for magazines and other publications as well.

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Garamond

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Typefaces bearing the Garamond name are not always based on the designs of Claude Garamond. However, these serif fonts share certain characteristics of timeless beauty and readability. Garamond is an old style serif font.

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Goudy

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This popular serif typeface from Frederic W. Goudy evolved over the years to include many weights and variations. Goudy Old Styleis a particularly popular choice.

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Palatino

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A widely used serif font for both body text and display type, Palatino was designed by Hermann Zapf. Part of its widespread use may stem from its inclusion—along with Helvetica and Times—with macOS.Palatino is an old-style serif font.

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Sabon

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Designed in the 1960s by Jan Tschichold, Sabon serif font is based on Garamond types. Those who commissioned the font design specified that it should be suitable for all printing purposes—and it is. Sabon is an old-style serif font.

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Stone Serif

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A relatively young design from the late 1980s, the whole Stone family with its coordinated serif, sans serif and informal families works well for mixing and matching styles. The serif versionis classified as a transitional style, along with older fonts of this style that first appeared in the 17th century.

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Times

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Times is possibly overused, but it is a good basic serif font nonetheless. Originally designed for newspaper use, Times, Times New Roman and other variations of this serif font are designed to be easily readable and legible as body text.

A Note About Language

Although most people use the word font generically, among professionals, a font is a particular variant of a typeface. For example, Times New Roman is a typeface—a family of related character styles—but Times New Roman Italic is a font, or a specific instantiation of a character style within a typeface.

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