FONTS

FONT FACTS
Did you know that there are over 75,000 fonts in existence? – and that's just Roman text!

Upper case and lower case refer to the actual drawers where a typesetter had stored the capital and uncial characters.

Serifs got their name from Roman times when words were chiselled in stone. Serifs on fonts remained popular through the age of metal and wood type because they kept the type from wearing down too quickly.

We use Serifs today because they have been found to help carry the eye across a line of type.

TYPEFACES DESIGNED FOR THE SCREEN
by Daniel Will-Harris
The typefaces you normally read have been designed to be typeset digitally and printed on paper. But as more people read more type off computer screens, they're unfortunately reading a type designed in another era for another medium. That's why type on screen can look pathetic (especially so-called "italics" on the Mac) and is often painful to read.

In the past, every time a new typesetting or printing medium appeared, designers created typefaces to take advantage of it. But today, while more people than ever are designing more typefaces than ever, so few of them are designing type specifically for the screen that you can count them on one finger.

Maybe it's the complexity of the task, which requires a deep knowledge of type design, legibility, and technology, rather than just style. Maybe it's because until the web has a way to transmit type as easily as it transmits pictures, there's no market to sell such faces.
Luckily, a company with the deepest pockets in the computer world thought deeply enough to see what a problem this was and hired a type designer with years of experience designing legible type under difficult circumstances, including Bell Centennial for phone books, and ITC Charter for low-res printed output.

The company: Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft. The type designer: Matthew Carter. The typefaces for the screen: Verdana a sans serif named for the verdant Seattle area and Georgia, a brilliant serif named after a tabloid headline about alien heads found in Georgia, which was then used to set test headlines. These fonts are available for free download at www.microsoft.com/truetype/

VERDANA
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Verdana does everything right on screen; it has a large x-height so characters look bigger, yet not so big that it's hard to tell the lowercase from the uppercase or that it looks crowded in apps such as web browsers that don't have adjustable leading (yet).
Verdana is extended, but more importantly, it has extra space between characters so they don't touch. The bolds are quite bold, ensuring that you can always tell the difference between bold and roman, yet the bold characters never fill-in, even at small sizes (you can still read it at 4 point, at least under Windows).

Special care has been taken with letters like 1, I, l, i and J so that they aren't confused. The lowercase "i" is slightly shorter than the lowercase l, which also makes them more distinct. Letter combinations such as "fi" "fl" and "ff" are designed so they clearly do not touch, as touching letters can create hard-to-read blobs on-screen. Microsoft's web site states, "Curves are reduced to a minimum in the counters. Lowercase characters are a pixel taller than their uppercase counterparts at key screen sizes, to aid the distinguishing of particular characters."

Even though it was designed for the screen, Verdana is attractive on paper. While some have compared it with Frutiger, a closer look reveals more of a resemblance to Carter's own Bell Centennial. Because it's spaced widely for the screen, it has a more "typewriter"-like feel to it on paper. But this face was not designed for "style," it was designed for function, and Matthew Carter explains (below) how the screen literally dictated the design.

GEORGIA
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Georgia, Carter's new screen serif, is perhaps an even more remarkable feat than Verdana. It takes the complexity of serifed characters and makes them not only comfortable on-screen, but also very attractive.

In large sizes, Georgia might be mistaken for a heavier Times New Roman. It's a sturdy face that could easily be used by any newspaper. On-screen in body-text sizes, it takes on new life -looking friendlier, almost like Cheltenham. The characters are beautifully clear at 8-12 point. Its x-height is larger than Times, but not as large as Verdana's, and the result is a face with a traditional feel that's very pleasant on-screen. It has a true italic that is so fluid and graceful it could be used by itself, and like Verdana, a bold that verges on ultra-bold. The numerals have a slightly old-style feeling but are still lining.

Georgia is nothing short of wonderful on-screen – which is, of course, the whole point. It could easily become the de facto serif screen face, and readers would be all the better for it.
qrstuvwxyz

OTHER TYPE FOR THE SCREEN
If you're looking for existing faces that are easy-on-the-eyes, some of the best include: Avenir, Blueprint, PNM Caecilia, Gill Sans Book, ITC Legacy Sans, Lucida Fax, Lucida Sans, ITC Maiandra (excellent and casual), Memphis, Melior (or Bitstream's well-hinted Zapf Elliptical), Myriad Multiple Master (you can tune the sizes yourself), Sassoon Sans, Serifa, and Univers or Zurich (especially the extended version).

Monotype offers special "ESQ" (Enhanced Screen Quality) fonts with hinting by Rickner and his colleagues at Monotype. ESQ faces include Arial, Arial Black, Century Schoolbook, Impact, LetterGothic, and Nimrod. Choose any of these faces from the Monotype library and you get an ESQ version. And some of these are free: Arial and Impact are both freely downloadable from the Microsoft site.
Copyright © 1996 Daniel Will-Harris

MORE MS FACES FOR THE SCREEN...
The first typeface Microsoft packaged with their browser was Comic Sans. Comic sans is a playful design reminiscent of comic-book lettering. It's casual, bold, and has few straight lines but lots of personality. It's also surprisingly easy to read on-screen. Comic Sans and bold is included in Microsoft's free Internet Explorer and can also be downloaded from the Microsoft web site.

Trebuchet, is a full family sans serifs with a lot of personality, and true italics. While not as easy to read as Verdana at small sizes, Trebuchet has a lot of character and charm.

Back to top