La Corelcción

Browsing the incredible font collection included with CorelDraw.

CorelDraw has been one of the most popular graphic design packages for more than ten years. Here we will take a look at the incredible wealth of fonts that the package includes.

Corel has a peculiar marketing strategy that consists of coming up with a new version every year, then dumping the previous versions for cheap sale in supermarkets. For example, we bought version 7 in a local shopping mall, for less than 5.000 pts (around $30), and a few years ago, version 3 in CD was a giveaway with PC magazine. It is also common to get CorelDraw installed or bundled with new computers. Even it is possible to get the fonts in the program through special offers like a Design Course ( "Graphic Design with Mariscal") that was published recently in Spain. It offered version 9, password-protected. You had to buy all the issues of the course to get all the keys to keep the program working. But all the fonts plus the fantastic font manager Bitstream Font Navigator were already in the first disk, unlocked and yours to keep. For less than $5!!!

It's easy to get "1000 fonts" CD packages for little money, or even as a gift. Alas, usually the quality is inversely proportional to the price tag. But the thousand fonts included with Corel are of the highest quality-- part of the ITC (International Typeface Corporation) and Bitstream catalogs. If you check the value of all these fonts (if you bought them separately, around 30-40 dollars each) you realize that you are getting several hundreds of dollars value in typefaces! If you are seriously into design, you must take advantage of these offers, even if you don't plan to use the program. The fonts alone are worth many times the price.

The ITC font library is excellent. You can browse their catalog visiting their website, or through other vendors such as Eyewire. The Bitstream catalog, on the other hand, includes many fonts carefully digitized from previous designs. In many cases they are faithful renderings of historical typefaces but the names are different for legal reasons. For example, Humanist 521 is very similar to Gill Sans, Zapf Elliptical looks almost identical to Melior, Zapf Calligraphic is equivalent to Palatino, and so on. It's possible to get a complete list of equivalences.

The fonts bundled with Corel include many complete text families (both serif and sans); many display and decorative fonts suitable for every imaginable project, from formal to festive. Better still, the typefaces included cover a wide range of associations to places and epoques. An invaluable design tool, certainly. The only kind of fonts that one finds missing is a bigger choice of dingbats. There are half a dozen symbol fonts, though these are very good.

All the font package comes alphabetically ordered in subfolders within a \Fonts directory , and both in Truetype and Type 1 format.

Let's inspect some of the hidden treasures that you will find in your Corel CD (just a tiny fraction of what you will find!) You can get further information visiting the mentioned sites (ITC or Bitstream.) We also recommend visiting Daniel Will-Harris' site, where you can get practical advice on the combinations of the fonts in your projects.

Dingbats.
The offer is limited, but we do find some fascinating symbol fonts.

Zapf Dingbats, designed by the venerable Hermann Zapf, one of the best typographers of this century, is a very utilitarian dingbat. Very handy to create icons, logos... A small classic. Some of the symbols, like the fountain pen, are truly the best you can get.

DF Diversions (Ayse Ulay, 1994): A good collection of icons that you will welcome to illustrate articles, brochures or posters dealing with arts, sports, lifestyles... If you add a touch of colour you can further take advantage of their possibilities. The images come in two versions, one lineal and another more "filled", with shapes that alternate negative and positive.

DF Diversities (Mike Quon, 1995) Amusing drawings in the style of quick ink sketches, suitable to create icons or simple monochrome illustrations for a variety of themes. They can also be coloured like in the example shown here. These series carry the DF name (standing for Design Fonts, the ITC dingbat range, an excellent collection.)

DF Calligraphic Ornaments (Richard Bradley, 1993) an assortment of pretty drawings rendered with the classic calligraphic quill technique (see two examples here) A lot of liturgic subjects, but it can also be used for invitations, posters... again, a few touches of colour, strategically applied, can bring these images to a new visual dimension.

Text families
I) Serif typefaces.
The disk contains a huge collection of utilitarian text fonts, those you will like to use for printed matter. The fonts on offer are enough to fit a professional print office. They include whole families of classics like Bodoni, Caslon, Garamond. These can also be used for titles and display, of course, especially using the bolder members of the family.

Bodoni is the quintessence of the so called modern typefaces, with plain horizontal or vertical, thin serifs. The bodonian typefaces were designed in the late XVIII century. We have several versions here: Bodoni and Bauer Bodoni.
Caslon. Another atemporal classic, designed after the original typefaces by William Caslon, an english XVII century printer and typographer. There are several Caslon fonts in the disk, slightly different. There is even another "caslon" called Casablanca. The Antique variant simulates an old text, with its irregular contours; this makes this font an obvious candidate for a project that needs the appearance of an old printed text.
Garamond and Baskerville are other examples of immortal type classics. Both belong to the oldstyle category, originally designed in the XVI century. Garamond is considered by many designers their "desert island" font. Its precious cursive is so wonderful and inviting.
Zapf Calligraphic and Zapf Elliptical are equivalent, respectivelly to Palatino and Melior. Both are named after german designer Hermann Zapf. Fonts with excellent legibility, even on the screen; they are distinctive and at the same time sober.
Century, Cheltenham, Goudy Old Style, Charter, Novarese, Benguiat, Bookman, Caxton, Clarendon, Dutch (with many variants), Fenice, Galliard, Korinna, Kuenstler, Lapidary 333 (a.k.a. Perpetua), Schneidler, Souvenir, Tiffany and many more are good designs from our own century, like the Zapf designs. Again, we must consider using any of these instead of the more overused fonts like Times. There is no excuse to type boring and monotone looking texts!
There is good selection of Slab Serif fonts: Lubalin Graph, Geometric Slabserif, Serifa, Stymie...these are some of our all time favorites to almost any printed use, from long texts to logotypes and titles.
We find only one Typewriter font, but it is excellent: a design from the 70s called American Typewriter, alias Memorandum. Exactly like an electric typewriter, with perfectly regular letterforms, with the advantage that these are not monospaced, and it is more suitable for long texts.

II) Sans serif fonts.
Again, we find true treasures in this category. Like with their serifed counterparts, we can (we must, we would say) use these instead of the sans serif fonts you have seen several million times, like Arial or Helvetica (though this is also present in the collection, under the alias of Swiss 721.)

Avant Garde, a classic from our times. Designed by the genial Herb Lubalin. It was the cover logo font from the homonyme magazine (late 60's-early 70s) and perhaps his signature work.
Benguiat Gothic. The serif version of this font can also be found in the collection but it is not nearly as strong as this. A charming design with some art-déco connotations and full of details. A swiss-blade font. Use for body text, only in uppercase, for display use, and it always works.
Franklin Gothic. An everyday font, sturdy and legible; the medium weight is ideal for captions, in combination with a serif body font, or with its own book weight.
Futura. A classic design by Paul Renner, (from the 1920s) It is still an elegant, restrained and attractive font, very legible and it conveys a clean and orderly atmosphere (too germanic, perhaps?)
Goudy Sans. A very peculiar sans serif font, designed by another well known typographer, Frederic Goudy, in the late 1920s. Its cursive is absolutely fascinating. You find forms that you did not expect to see. This is what makes this font special and often you will see the irresistible cursive variant instead of the more standard-looking base font.
Humanist 521 is actually equivalent to Gill Sans or Hammersmith (drawn by Eric Gill), and it is one of the typefaces in use in the London Underground system (together with the famous Edward Johnston font.)
Humanist 777 (=Frutiger): Another favourite, simple and functional, and it has all the necessary weights. Far more elegant and sophisticated than other swiss designs, but equally good for a non-distracting display text font. Versatile and beautiful.
Kabel (Kabana): a digital version of a rather old sans serif font, this time from the 1920s (though it was used especially in the sixties and early seventies.) Designed by the german typographer Rudolph Koch, Kabel has very distinctive lowercase shapes.
Zapf Humanist (=Optima), again by Hermann Zapf, is the perfect definition of the Humanistic fonts: sans serif typefaces designed with the classic proportions of older fonts, and more complex and refined than most sans serif designs such as Helvetica.
Zurich (a.k.a. Univers) with a wide range of weights and variations, from extra condensed light to ultra bold extended.

Display and Decorative fonts.

There is no shortage of display fonts in the Corel Font collection, covering almost any style and feel. Let's see some notable examples.

Amelia: the famous font that used in the Beatles film from 1968, Yellow Submarine (together with Kabel).
American Uncial. A digitized uncial alphabet. The uncial letterforms, known since the 10th century or earlier, are still often used in celtic countries, especially in Scotland and Ireland. Beautiful and strong.
Balloon, like its name implies, is a font you will like to use in comics' dialogs, and other informal and funny uses.
Bickley Script is one of the many calligraphic fonts included. It's very elegant but not stiff: a perfect combination of spontaneity and formality, that makes it a sure bet for many design projects.
We will not discuss all the handwritten, script or calligraphic fonts included, but the offer is generous: Fine Hand, Chiller, Bergell, Ru'ach, John Handy, Tiger Rag, Van Dijk and several Copperplate Scripts. There is a lot to choose and first-class stuff.
Bolt Bold is a strong and geometrically simple font from the early 70s, and still useful, partly thanks to the current revival of these years in the design field, but also by its own merits. Suitable for posters, flyers, logos.
Broadway. Its name is well choosen. We can imagine bars, restaurants and dance halls from the 20s - 40s with this font, or in a music film, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers...
Busorama. Another seventies font. You will see it, not coincidentally, in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction credits.
Enviro. A special typeface that on the one hand reminds you of the architects writings, and on the other hand, has some Art-Déco connotations --similar alphabets were used in posters, packaging and film credits at the time.
Firenze. It was common to use this kind of bold decorative serif fonts in the late 60s and 70s. We love this one and we think it is perfect for many display uses, at big sizes and with a well chosen colour scheme.
Glaser: the famous stencil font designed by the always amazing and wise Milton Glaser.
Honda. A crossing between gothic and futuristic letterforms, no less. Though it was designed quite a long time ago (Bonder & Carnase, 1970), it still has a contemporary look.
Hazel. A fascinating initials alphabet. You will use it sparingly, but it will bring a special look to your designs. Created by a british designer, the late Phill Grimshaw, who has created many more interesting display fonts.
Motter Fem (Femina.) A peculiar decorative font, with sexy curves. Ummm! You will see it in some 70s-looking designs.
Pablo. Based in Pablo Picasso's handwriting. There are quite a few examples of artists' letters converted to fonts. We will deal with this topic in a future article.
Papyrus. A favourite for many designers. It has been used a lot in posters, stationery and other printed projects. It looks a refined calligraphy on textured quality paper.
Oz Handicraft. A condensed typeface originally designed by the designer Oz Cooper, and it is a good candidate for informal text when some space economy is needed. The letterforms are beautiful and very original.
Pioneer. This 3-D looking font is also a product from the early seventies (Bonder & Carnase) and works well even at small sizes. Obviously, a display only font. It is a shame that this kind of decorative typefaces is almost obsolete, with modern graphic design software.
Plaza. Brings to one's memory the posters and publications from the 20s-30s, the Art Déco era, with carefully crafted geometrical forms, with elegant and well balanced proportions that convey a sense of elegance and sophistication.
Rubber Stamp and Stencil will suffice as stencil fonts (together with Glaser.) These two mimic the type on packages and parcels; the first one even has rugged contours, like printed on wrapping paper, wood or burlap.
Technical is an alias of Tekton, similar to the lettering in arquitectural projects. It has been a bit overused, but it is still a good font, suitable for brochures, subtitles, captions-- and of course, in maps and drafts.
Zinjaro and Arriba Arriba are two "ethnical" fonts. The first has been used in african or caribbean-looking designs, and the second... well, the name says it all: Ándale, Ándale, Arriba, Arriba, Epa, Epa, Epa!

It would take hours to show and comment all the hidden treasures in this excellent collection. Even if you don't want to hear about Corel Draw as an illustration program, it is a worthy addition to your designer resources, and the font package, the font manager and the ton of clipart and photography included is an incredible bonus. If sometime you find a good sale of the program, don't hesitate and purchase it.