Topic awaiting preservation: printing fonts

I am trying to do a style sheet for our campus magazine and the previous font we used for body text is so heavy. I was wondering if anyone had some advice on which font to use. I want one that is light and not bold.

Times? Garamond? What font are you referring to that is too heavy?

well we used arial last year, it just looked heavy on the page after it was printed. I'm not sure if we should go down in pt size or what. Any suggestions? Like on good pt size for magazine and fonts.

Hi there Adaline!

I work mainly with magazine layout and we use New Century Schoolbook for our body in one of our magazines, about 9,4 in size. I like it, its easy to read. Used one today called ITC Legacy Serif, but I´m still "tasting" it until monday, that means havent decided yet. Im 30, and at this age its harder to change and try out "cool" fonts...Specially in a mag.
Use the net, use this forum but I guess it´s all a matter of your own personal taste. Here´s plenty of information about good fonts, adobe.com is a goldmine too. But my thumbrule is that body text should feel good and comfortable to read. If I ever use Arial/Helvetica I use it for headlines...

Sincerely yours

Tommy

Yep. Agreement with Tommy. A sans serif font like Arial is sorta tough to read in big blocks.

They may not be "hip", but there's a reason why the classic serif fonts like Times, Century Schoolbook, Garamond, Caslon .... are so popular. It's because they read well! Some publications or books will do a "colophon" where they describe which fonts they used. Can be interesting reading.

Do what you want for headlines or call-outs or pull quotes or ornamental stuff, but I'd stick to something more conservative for the major parts of the body text.

If you want an advice about headlines, I like Helvetica Compressed Extra, which is a font you can size up a bit and it has good readability. I threw out the ITC Legacy font and used another one called Charter, really liked that one. That was the result of my creativity today. For me, when doing mags it depends on my mood, what music Im listening to (yes, no music, no work)

If I have time I can play around a bit, but since time is the thing I normally dont have, I stick with the fonts Steve mentioned for example. If I get my hand on a new mag, that´s almost the first thing I look for, readability. And "air" (use the space)

Would be nice to hear what you decided for, Adaline.

Sincerely yours

Tommy

so you guys are saying to use a serif font rather than a sans serif. Hmmm for some reason I always though serif was easier to read. I'll be sure to let you know what I decide on.

One thing we've lacked in the past is keeping our magzine consistant to a style. Like having it have it's own personality. Like you know it's a "Breakaway" by just opening it up. Ya know what I mean? So I'm hard at work trying to give us an identity.

I need a copy of ITC Century Schoolbook...anyone care to email me one? Thanks in advance.

Hey. boudga. Where you been hiding ?

Welcome home.

Sorry I don`t have the font you seek. ( Would anyone care to mail me one, too ?)



Why, yes. I was raised by Apes. How did you know ?