The Professional Look – Part IV
The Professional Look, The Complete Guide to Desktop Publishing, is a book I co-authored with Scott Tilden in 1991. Each Thursday I post an excerpt from the chapter I wrote about typography. Many of you dye-subbers also design some of the graphics you print, which includes setting type. Hopefully these posts will give you new insights into typography. Click here for my previous post.
Rules for legibility
There are two criteria for which typeface to choose: design and legibility. You want to create a design that is attractive, especially to the type of reader you are publishing for, and you want to make your publication easy to read.
Several factors affect legibility:
Type style. We’re most comfortable reading familiar styles.
Type size. You want to make it big enough so that people of normal vision can easily read it (the elderly often prefer it bigger than younger people), yet still have room to get in all your copy.
Generally your test should range between 9 and 12 points in size. (We’ll discuss type measurements later.)
Leading or line spacing. The space between lines of type, leading (rhymes with wedding) is traditionally measured baseline to baseline.
Line length. The width of your line should be comfortable for the reader’s eyes to take in easily. The appropriate length depends on the type size.
Type compatibility. the personality of your type should suit your publication — and its readers — and the different type styles you choose should have a design relationship that is congruent and pleasing.
Don’t use too many different type styles in the same layout. Just as you can pick attractive tables and lamps to complement your couch and chair, so too you can you choose type styles from different families that look good on the same page.
Type/paper contrast. The more the better. The visually impaired and many older adults often have trouble perceiving contrast.
Designers seem to love subtle type. They often resent the limitations on their trendy designs imposed by rules of legibility — and think a medium gray type on an off-white paper is just gorgeous.
It probably is.
But to some, it’s also nearly invisible.
Paper texture and color. Don’t override legibility with an obtrusively patterned or brightly colored paper.
Next week: Coming to terms
Tags: leading, legibility, line spacing, readability
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