Best fonts for press

[cricketx]

G'day
Just wanted to know what the best fonts for newspaper readability are.

What are some of the common ones and what are the ones I should definately stay away from.

I remember reading about a research regarding the fonts that people like in their newspaper. Anyone have the appropiate link?

Thnaks in advance

Indesign2
Windows XP (SP1)
Designing Tabloid Newspaper (Any tips welcome)

 

[BionicJohn]

Hi, cricketx,

Get hold of a few tabloids and look carefully at their design.

Generally speaking the headlines are in large point sans serif font - Helvetica, Gill Sans - and the body text is a small serif font - Times, Garamond.

Sub headings can be either.

Avoid decorative fonts - they're distracting but fine for birthday cards.

Once you have established a layout/format you can break the rules infrequently for effect.

Iechyd da! John
00:36 04/07/2003 BST

 

[cricketx]

Thanks John

I am currently using the standard "Times New Roman PS". Is that a no-no?

The problem is that I have no idea how it would look in press.

Yes I have been looking at other tabloids for design but I must confess that I cannot recognise the fonts they use.

I'll try the fonts you told me but can I ask what "sans serif" actually means? Are rounded fonts better for press?











Indesign2
Windows XP (SP1)
Designing Tabloid Newspaper (Any tips welcome)

 

[Eggles]

'Sans serif' just means the little tags on the tips of the characters are not present like they are in serif fonts. Compare for example Arial (sans serif) with Times New Roman (serif). The theory is that the serifs help guide the eye along the letters, making reading slabs of text easier.

There's nothing wrong with TNR - it was invented specifically for a newspaper (The Times) so using it for the body copy is quite OK. The only drawback is that because it is a standard font in many Windows apps (e.g. in Word, it is the default) it sort of has been overused. People are very familiar with it.

Another very nice serif font I use quite a bit for body text is Adobe Garamond, but there are lots of others (e.g. Baskerville, Bell, Benguiat, Bodoni, Bookman, Calisto, Caslon, Century Schoolbook, Century, DellaRobia, Georgia, Goudy Old Style, News, Romana, Usherwood, Weiss). Have a look at the fonts on your system, apply them to some of your text, print it and see how easy (or not) it is to read.

 

[BionicJohn]

Hi, cricketx,

Surf over to

http://www.myfonts.com/category/myfonts/index.html

and play around.

TimeNewRomanPS is a fine serif Type1 font, and easy to read at smaller type sizes. I use it a lot.

http://www.ieuanfawr.btinternet.co.uk/pmwin/kippie.pdf

I think that's all in TNRPS. But it could be Times!! They're very similar.

Iechyd da! John
16:40 04/07/2003 BST