Montserrat

Montserrat began as a preservation project. Julieta Ulanovsky photographed the painted signage and early-twentieth-century lettering of the Montserrat neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, which was steadily being replaced, and drew a typeface from what she found.

What came out is a geometric sans that is noticeably warmer than the Futura-derived norm — the letterforms are wider, the x-height is taller, and the proportions come from signpainting rather than from a compass. That makes it unusually versatile: it works as a headline face, as interface type, and at a push as short-run body copy.

It is also extremely widely used, which is worth weighing. It will never look wrong, and it will rarely look distinctive.