Kevin Cullis: How to Start a Business Mac Version

As an entrepreneur and business startup using a Mac I’m always looking for basic items much like going hiking for the first time. What do I take with me, what do I have to have? Same with getting into the graphic arts.

Here’s a list of 25 classic fonts for graphic designers that can translate into a business startup or for an entrepreneur that may not know what “got to have” fonts are needed for their Mac running business. But rather than go to the site, here’s the list of what’s on your Snow Leopard Mac in bold:

1. Helvetica (y)
2. Bodoni (n)
3. Clarendon (n)
4. Akzidenz Grotesk (n)
5. Avenir (n)
6. Din (n)
7. Futura (y)
8. News Gothic (y, called News Gothic MT)
9. Frutiger (n)
10. Meta (n)
11. Gill Sans (y)
12. Garamond (y)
13. Mrs Eaves (n)
14. Dax (n)
15. Myriad (n)
16. VAG Rounded (n)
17. Optima (y)
18. Avant Garde (n)
19. Univers (n)
20. Rockwell (y)
21. Minion (n)
22. Sabon (n)
23. Cocon (n)
24. Rotis (n)
25. Bembo (n)

Apple hasn’t done a bad job giving beginning Mac users a smattering of good fonts to work with about 1/3 of the “classic fonts” in your Font Book listings.

What you DON’T want to do is get “complex” fonts and use them in your writing. Here’s a great short article on complex versus simple fonts.

The real question: what order should we get our next fonts?

Do you have any comments about these? What would you recommend for the basics?

As one who is not a graphic artist I see my Mac with Snow Leopard installed has a number of fonts installed, but how the heck does one know which ones are used where in which case?

As a business owner it would be nice if some graphic artist took a list of the fonts that come with a Mac give a quick outline of where each of them would be used, such as: writing, books, web, art, graphic art, etc.

Anyone out there that has done this for us average folks?