Font Types

[MatthewL]

Not sure where to put this thread so here seems to be best choice.

 

Fonts, some are easy to read some are not.

 

Many years ago one of the trainers in our team who I used to work with who had been delivering all sorts of IT systems training for years told me about fonts and how a certain type of font is read. Aerial, Times New Roman, Calibri which I believe are Serif fonts were some of the included fonts which were deemed best to use on screen and in print when presenting or handing out materials.

 

They were given the name such as clear font or true fonts. Does anyone know what this is as I cannot remember and I am no longer in touch with the trainer?

 

I've got an example of a none type font been used and its difficult to read and I want to back my argument up with the bit behind it.

[Steve21]

Do you mean sans-serif fonts? Those are the easier to read ones (for normal writing etc). Serif is the harder to read ones in terms of blocks of text normally

 

Truetype is more about how clean they appear on screens (Think raster vs bitmap etc for scaling etc) (With ClearType being an MS version)

 

Steve

[MatthewL]

Could be ClearType it was that long ago I cannot remember.

 

Bit of background a magazine has been produced but random fonts have been used making it really difficult to read so drafting something to send back to explain why certain type face etc should be used etc. It's for a group I am member of and this kind of thing won't have crossed their minds but just want the proof to go behind what I am saying.

[mavhc]

As a screen is much lower resolution than print, sans serif look better on screen. Serifs are added to make letters look more different, so books usually use them, makes it faster to read. However as sans serif is more used by computers it seems more modern, and is thus adopted by magazines who wish to appear more contemporary than their counterparts.

[Rob_D]

Based on what I've been told in the past...

It's believed that sans serif fonts (Arial, Calibri) make for easier screen reading (for reasons stated by the Steve and mavhc), while serif fonts (Times New Roman, Garamond) are considered to be easier to read on printed media due to both increased letter differentiation and the improved "flow" across the page (although realistically, a lot of it probably has to do with the sort comings of the printing press).

 

Clear and True Type fonts are a system of designing and rendering fonts made my Microsoft and Apple (respectively) to help keep on-screen fonts as clear as possible.

 

For your purpose, I think you need to focus on "font paring" (https://www.canva.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-font-pairing/). Technically you can mix serif, sans-serif and semis-serif fonts together as long as they visually fit (sticking within the same Font Family is a safe way to ensure this, but by no means the only option). If this is something that's been put together by "non-professionals" then it may be the formatting as much as the specific font. For example, the designer might be able to make it read better by tweaking the tracking or kerning.

 

Best of luck and I hope this helps.

[Andrew_C]

About a century ago, I worked with printers and designers... One thing stuck - a serif font is easier to read (for the vast majority) on paper. Particularly for 'body text' the serif gives the illusion of a line for your eyes to follow.

 

Headlines and captions are less of an issue, as you can read them without scanning across the page.

[MatthewL]

Thanks for the advice on this, will go away and have a good read and use what I need to.