what is a modern font?

[pagetta]

what would you class as a 'modern font'? We are a business software reseller, and software developer, and currently use microsoft sans serif or verdana as our main fonts in advertising or collateral, but the big cheese wants something more 'modern'.

any ideas or insight into this ambiguous request would be most welcome!

thank you :-)

[MuNKyonline]

For main copy I would say that there isnt much more than what you have already mentioned. What about Tahoma? You could find a new font but then not many people will have it. The only way of getting around that would be to embed the font so it would be viewable on any computer. Browser-wise I know it can be done using internet explorer but i'm not sure how to do it for anything else.

[dharrison]

I can't really vouch for modern, but Arial is pretty versatile for a modern-looking site. It is quite clean and easy to read for content. Alternatively, I'd say Verdana or Tahoma.

If you're going to opt for modern font, have a alternative font in your stylesheet:

body { font-family: Jokerman, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; }

This basically replaces the font to Arial for the average visitor that only has the standard fonts on their machine (Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, etc). You can have as many fonts as you like in this list. The last bit basically tells the browser to display any sans-serif font available.

Embedding fonts is alright, but they do take a bit of time to download, are generally unreliable and not everyone has the time or patience to wait that long. I think embedding fonts is exclusive to MSIE. Which kind of leaves the other browsers up a certain creek.

Hope this helps,

[johngroup]

Modern can range form simple san serif to way-out futuristic. Do you have an online shot of your collateral pieces?