The CV Inn

Has the Computer Modern Font already bored you?

While I find it extremely clean and elegant, I don’t want people to recognize my typesetting system by the font — especially my Curriculum Vitæ. Indeed, it’s very easy to associate a document to LaTeX when it’s typeset in Computer Modern, headings are not customized, and the style is elegant yet totally predictable (i.e. the “I’ve already seen that elsewhere” syndrome).

Hereby you will find a list and the necessary commands to typeset your document with different, and hopefully more refreshing fonts.

LaTeX Fonts vs. Xe(La)TeX Fonts

Font installation in LaTeX is not immediate: you can’t use your system fonts directly or with simple commands.

The installation process goes beyond my knowledge.

At this point, lazy people will do one of the following things:

1. change typesetting system — lazy+not-so-smart people will go back to Word, lazy+smart will discover XeTeX;
2. ask themselves whether their LaTeX distribution (i.e. TeXLive, MacTeX, MikTeX) has some other fonts bundled, and how to select them in a document;
3. read some 200 pages tutorial on how to install Fonts in LaTeX, and learning font tables + metrics + so many other things in the process — they’re lazy people, this violates our main assumption.

Now we say we haven’t got these fonts, so how do we proceed?

Custom LaTeX Fonts

Much of the information that follows is taken from this wonderful page. Thanks!

1. Computer Modern (Default)

From Wikipedia

As implied by the name, Computer Modern is a modern font. Modern, or “Didone”, fonts have high contrast between thick and thin elements, and their axis of “stress” or thickening is perfectly vertical. Computer Modern, specifically, is based on Monotype Modern 8a, and like its immediate model it has a large x-height relative to the length of ascenders and descenders.

Computer Modern

2. Venturis Old

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{venturisold}

Venturis Old

3. Bookman

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{bookman}

From Wikipedia

Bookman was designed as an alternative to Caslon, with straighter serifs, making it more suitable for book and display applications. It maintains its legibility at small sizes, and can be used successfully for headlines and in advertising. In 1936, Chauncey H. Griffith of the American Linotype foundry developed a revival.

Bookman

4. TeX Gyre Schola

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{tgschola}

From the TeX Gyre website

The TeX Gyre Schola family of serif fonts is based on the URW Century Schoolbook L family distributed with Ghostscript. The original was designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1919, for the American Type Founders. The constituent 4 standard faces contain nearly 1250 glyphs each and are available in PostScript, TeX and OpenType formats.

TG Schola

5. Times

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{mathptmx}

Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned by the British newspaper, The Times, in 1931, designed by Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent at the English branch of Monotype.[1] It was commissioned after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times.

Times

6. Computer Modern Bright

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{cmbright}

CM Bright

7. Utopia via Fourier package

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{fourier}

Fourier

8. Latin Modern

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}

Latin Modern

9. Helvetica

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[scaled]{helvetica}
\renewcommand*\familydefault{\sfdefault} %% Only if the base font of the document is to be sans serif

From the Wikipedia entry

Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) of Münchenstein, Switzerland. Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Die Neue Haas Grotesk, it was created based on Schelter-Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, had no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.

Helvetica

10. GFS Didot

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{gfsdidot}

From the Wikipedia entry:

Didot is a name given to a group of typefaces named after the famous French printing and type producing family. The classification is known as modern, or Didone. The typeface we know today was based on a collection of related types developed in the period 1784-1811. Firmin Didot (1764–1836) cut the letters, and cast them as type. His brother Pierre Didot (1760–1853 ) used the types in printing. His edition of La Henriade by Voltaire in 1818 is considered his masterwork. The typeface takes inspiration from John Baskerville’s experimentation with increasing stroke contrast and a more condensed armature. The Didot family’s development of a high contrast typeface with an increased stress is contemporary to similar faces developed by Giambattista Bodoni in Italy. Didot is described as neoclassical, and is evocative of the Age of Enlightenment.

GFS Didot

Related posts:

1. Non-prehistoric LaTeX Resume Template — Advanced Graphics and Typography
2. The “Linux” LaTeX CV Template