Research Point Looking at Symbols and Identifying Text

WOW I have found a new world of characters accessible from my keypad ☺ hundreds of ~û á symbols for words I don't understand and useful symbols like ² and ° I can even persuade Blogger to show the symbol & which usually won't work. If you haven't done this before put Num Lock on then hold down the ALT key whilst typing the secret code on the number keypad (ok it's not secret but there are so many number codes you need a guide like the one here which describes things in more detail)

I used the enormously addictive www.identifont.com to look at text in Psychologies Magazine and was surprised to find that there were more than one typeface on a page. I'd always been told to pick a single typeface and stick to it.

On the front cover was Bell (Richard Austin, Monotype Staff) and either Adelle Sans (Veronique Burian and Jose Scaglione, Type Together) or Figgins Sans (Nick Shinn, Shinntype)

Inside text News Gothic (Morris Fuller Benton) - first published in 1908 and Berthold Caslon Book BQ (Gunter Gerhard Lange) or Monotype Century Expanded (Monotype Classic Fonts) I'm not completely convinced by this one as the text looks thinner.

I tried checking The Times and came up with Arhem(Fred Smeijers, Our Type) which I was also not entirely sure about so I scanned a copy and enlarged it so I could answer the questions really carefully,

and came up with Borgis Pro (Ralph M Unger, RMU Typedesign) Is this just because newsprint looses some definition on cheap paper or that I couldn't answer all the questions (there were no  $ signs and the only capital Q's were italics so I wasn't sure how that worked )? If you allow the italic as a capital Q then the font is Thorndale (Monotype Design Studio) There were other fonts suggested including Times (Stanley Morison) but I'm still not sure it's a complete match. It's a useful tool for getting an idea of fonts and fun to play with but how accurate is it? or am I just not good enough at seeing the similarities and differences?

Most fonts had double storey g and a - not surprising as this makes them more legible. I've been reading about legibility on Ralf Herrman's excellent site for an earlier Research Point. There were more serif fonts than I had expected to find and a greater variety of fonts I've never heard of in a single publication.

How much do we need lots of subtly different fonts? I guess they look very different to an expert and maybe they're working on my subconscious to differentiate products.There is a considered argument  here  The Internet means that there is more freedom to self publish I suppose designers are often looking for something quite specific to fulfil a role and more fonts make it more likely that the perfect one can be found.