Every parent will con­firm this – pick­ing favourites is murder. For­tu­nately choos­ing your favourite fonts is less emo­tion­ally laden, yet it still proves to be a dif­fi­cult thing to do. I should know; I have been asked quite often what are my favourite and least favourite type­faces – just recently in this inter­view on Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Hell, the blog by “per­pet­u­ally curi­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sional” Paul McIvor of Rosetta PR.

By asking experts, celebri­ties, and other author­ity fig­ures in the type com­mu­nity for their pre­ferred type­faces we hope to learn from them. Their selec­tions can be point­ers to either estab­lished clas­sics or fresh and lesser-​known designs that oth­er­wise may have eluded us. This is what brought me to ask Donald Beek­man last month at Typo Berlin what his favourite club faces are. The reason to specif­i­cally ask Donald is quite straight­for­ward. The Amsterdam-​based inter­viewer for Type­r­a­dio, musi­cian, DJ/producer, and head of an under­ground record label also designs under the mon­icker DBXL brand­ing and pack­ag­ing for his col­leagues in the music indus­try. Donald inti­mately knows club cul­ture and is immersed in the dance-​oriented music scene. All his type designs but one orig­i­nated in let­ters he drew for logos, record sleeves, posters, and flyers – Brak is the only design he started “just for fun”.

Donald Beek­man speaks at TypeSHED11: Type, drugs and rock ’n’ roll
© TypeSHED11 / WGTN / NZ

In addition to his list on The FontFeed, Donald also made a selection of his favourite Club FontFonts for Unzipped. He admits this one was a little harder. Strange as it may seem he is not a typical FontFont user. Indeed, Beekman mostly uses his own typefaces in his design work and has no less than 11 volumes of these fonts published through FontFont, yet for this list he wanted to avoid including too many of his own designs. He went through the FontFont collection twice, carefully evaluating the options. Many are too corporate or serious to be used as club faces, but there is also a large selection of fun and flashy FontFonts. Furthermore Donald explains “the current flyer culture has considerably loosened up design-wise, and it has become less a statement to use specific techno faces. Actually nowadays more (anything?) is allowed, and this also applies to the music. The general attitude is more open-minded, which is reflected in the design. On the one hand a pity, on the other hand liberating?”

In addition to this list Donald picked his favourite Club Fonts for The FontFeed.