Allow me to wax philosophical about Montserrat for a minute. I started off using it because it was the Shadowdark font and I wanted my stuff to feel Shadowdark-y. For the record, that's a fine reason to use that font. However, as I started to develop my own layout style Montserrat began to have some issues.
First off, Shadowdark uses primarily a two column layout on an A5 page. Montserrat works well for that. For a bunch of reasons I decided to move to a three column layout with my core text spread over two columns and the outside facing columns for headings, editorial content, and (for adventures, condensed stat blocks. Let me drop a couple of images ot make this clearer.
Here's a two column bit from the adventure materials in Cursed Scroll 4
And a bit from the core SD book.
Both strong examples of two column layout, the first obviously more condensed than the latter.
Here's an example from one of my books.
You can see the difference three columns makes - it's a different design space in many respects. I wanted that extra column for a bunch of reasons. One, the inset maps (thanks Johan Nohr) and two the ability to tuck condensed stat blocks right next to where they needed to be used, and three to use as space for what I'll call editorial content, often details that I present there much like you'd see in a foot note, and with the same goal of not breaking the flow of the main text.
I also moved to bulleted lists for room descriptions, but that's a whole other topic.
Once I moved to the three column layout Montserrat was a problem because it's a very wide font. I wanted to use the same font, or version thereof for both the body text and the sidebars, but the width of Montserrat made it a less than optimal choice for that job. Here's the same quote in both 12pt Montserrat Regular and 12pt Alegreya Regular by way of comparison.
Fine for the body, but when you stick a wide font into narrow columns you get all sorts of unsightly end-line breaks. Not only does the resulting text look more jagged than I'd like, but it also takes up additional, precious, vertical space. Combined with my desire for a serif font for the body (as I feel it's more fantasy) I needed an alternative. Alegreya is a wonderful font, free for commerical use that had both serif and sans serif versions.
This isn't a critique of Montserrat generally at all, just an example of why sometimes you need to pick the right font for the right job.
First off, Shadowdark uses primarily a two column layout on an A5 page. Montserrat works well for that. For a bunch of reasons I decided to move to a three column layout with my core text spread over two columns and the outside facing columns for headings, editorial content, and (for adventures, condensed stat blocks. Let me drop a couple of images ot make this clearer.
Here's a two column bit from the adventure materials in Cursed Scroll 4
And a bit from the core SD book.
Both strong examples of two column layout, the first obviously more condensed than the latter.
Here's an example from one of my books.
You can see the difference three columns makes - it's a different design space in many respects. I wanted that extra column for a bunch of reasons. One, the inset maps (thanks Johan Nohr) and two the ability to tuck condensed stat blocks right next to where they needed to be used, and three to use as space for what I'll call editorial content, often details that I present there much like you'd see in a foot note, and with the same goal of not breaking the flow of the main text.
I also moved to bulleted lists for room descriptions, but that's a whole other topic.
Once I moved to the three column layout Montserrat was a problem because it's a very wide font. I wanted to use the same font, or version thereof for both the body text and the sidebars, but the width of Montserrat made it a less than optimal choice for that job. Here's the same quote in both 12pt Montserrat Regular and 12pt Alegreya Regular by way of comparison.
Fine for the body, but when you stick a wide font into narrow columns you get all sorts of unsightly end-line breaks. Not only does the resulting text look more jagged than I'd like, but it also takes up additional, precious, vertical space. Combined with my desire for a serif font for the body (as I feel it's more fantasy) I needed an alternative. Alegreya is a wonderful font, free for commerical use that had both serif and sans serif versions.
This isn't a critique of Montserrat generally at all, just an example of why sometimes you need to pick the right font for the right job.
