I recently had to re-install windows and all the software on my laptop. Now one of the fonts I used to have – Gill Sans MT isn’t there any more. I’m not particularly fussed about not having it, (it was the house style of one of my clients for whom I don’t do much work now) but I notice that any emails or docs that I read which were written in Gill Sans MT now come out in some really old style non-proportional typewriter font. Courier, maybe.

So it got me thinking – if I try to be clever and send out all my emails and reports in a fancy font that the recipient doesn’t have installed on his PC, do they get converted into Courier and lose all the formatting, or does my font get carried over?

Will be rendered with a substitute unless it’s in a format like PDF that can embed fonts (and you’ve set it to do so).

Some places I’ve worked have made their own truetype fonts with their logo, and use that rather than embedding an image. Font gets installed on all company computers – then if an editable document leaves it won’t get the official logo on it.

So what are the smartest looking fonts that are on 99% of all potential recipients PC’s then?

I used to use garamond and lucidia for reports – but while they look lovely when printed out they can be rubbish on screen. And I don’t want to use Times Roman or Ariel.