Suggested Fonts?

Nellisir

Hero
I'm putting together a free pdf of all the d20 material I've actually completed since 3e came out - I never actually published any of it, and I haven't got the time to game any more, so why the hell not - and I'm looking for suggestions or advice on fonts (and formatting, etc and so forth). Nothing extraordinarily fancy, obviously; I want legible and useful, not gaudy and unreadable. Right now I've got Time New Roman 10 for the body, Arial 8 for mechanics, Verdict SF for large headers, and Fritz for smaller headers. I tend to get sucked into randomly swapping them around; time is limited and realizing I've wasted 90 minutes playing with fonts pisses me off.

So, what do you recommend?
 

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Depends a lot on what fonts you have, of course.

Anyway, here are some I've used along the way: Book Antiqua, Adobe Garamond Pro, Adobe Caslon Pro, Adobe Minion Pro (hm, I'm sure there's a pattern there. . .), Palatino Linotype, Times New Roman (often for small-type tables, IIRC), the two defaults from MS Word 2007 (Calibri is one, I think. . .?), Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana. . . I forget the rest. Certainly, a bunch of specialty / fancy fonts for fantasy headings and whatnot.

The first five or six would be some of those I've used a lot in body text for documents.

You can pick up a fair few online, for free. Legally, I mean. But it'd be worth going through all the ones you do have, and seeing how you like them, first of all.
 
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Depends a lot on what fonts you have, of course.

Anyway, here are some I've used along the way: Book Antiqua, Adobe Garamond Pro, Adobe Caslon Pro, Adobe Minion Pro (hm, I'm sure there's a pattern there. . .), Palatino Linotype, Times New Roman (often for small-type tables, IIRC), the two defaults from MS Word 2007 (Calibri is one, I think. . .?), Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana. . . I forget the rest. Certainly, a bunch of specialty / fancy fonts for fantasy headings and whatnot.

The first five or six would be some of those I've used a lot in body text for documents.

You can pick up a fair few online, for free. Legally, I mean. But it'd be worth going through all the ones you do have, and seeing how you like them, first of all.
All of those look familar. I've picked up quite a few fonts - that's part of the problem. Calibri & Cambria are not really two of my favorites, at least not right now. Ask again in twenty minutes. ;)
 

Oh, another one I've used a bit (just looked through some not-too-old documents of mine) is Arno Pro. Adobe again, if I'm not mistaken. Shill? Hm, not that I know of. . . :uhoh: ;)

Actually, it seems that font, along with the first six I listed before, is one of the fonts I've preferred to use. And yeah, Times New Roman often does get put in tables, smaller-type stats and stuff like that. Generally, if the main font is, say, at 11 point (which is pretty common for my own docs) the tables might be 9 or 8 point, and the choice of font for those simply came down to readability and neatness, at that size. Some of them just don't scale downwards so well, I've found, even if they look very nice and read perfectly fine at medium or larger.
 

For headers you can get fancy, but for body text I have always been fond of the proud old lady herself: Times New Roman 10 pt.

It's readable and packs a lot of information in a small space and looks profession imo.

Pretty much every RPG book I've published has been TNR 10 pt.
 

Based on how I choose fonts, and the fonts I've chosen for projects I've completed, I recommend:

1) Pick a serif you like that has enough variations (at a minimum, regular, bold, and italic, but I find a bold-italic useful from time to time) and use that for the body text. I always stay away from Times New Roman, because it's too darn common (so much so that I've come to loathe it). Some great examples already listed, to which I'd add Bembo, Adobe Jenson Pro, Janson Text, Poppl-Pontifex, Sabon, Perpetua, ITC Legacy Serif, and Warnock Pro. (There are some subtly different "looks" here... see item 6.)

2) Pick one sans or *very readable* display font that you like and use it for all the headings (except maybe the top heading level). Think about using small caps, italics, or differing weights and sizes to differentiate your outline levels. Strongly consider going no lighter in weight than boldface. You could also use the bold weight of your body text font for some of your headings (the bottom level of your outline, perhaps, or the top). Personally I try not to use Arial, Helvetica, Univers, or Zurich, because, again, they're too common (but I haven't yet come to loathe them). A couple good suggestions above, to which I'd add Optima, Myriad (Pro), Poppl-Laudatio, Du Bellay, Rotis Sans Serif, ITC Legacy Sans, Amerika Sans, Sava Pro, and Cronos Pro. (There are some very different "looks" here... see item 6.)

3) If you picked a sans in step 2, use this for captions and tables at its regular or light weight. If you didn't, pick one now for this purpose.

4) If you want, pick a "fancy" display font for one-off titles. Remember that the fancier a font you get, the less readable it is. This is where you can cap off your typographic choices with a neat bit of flair. I've successfully (I think) used Melcheburn, Amerika, MA Bastarda, King Arthur, Kelt Caps Freehand, Intimacy, Magna Veritas, Sherwood, ITC Rubino Sans, Cochin Bold, and Castiglione.

5) BE CONSISTENT. If you chose a black bar with a white bold, small caps sans as your Level 2 heading, stick with that throughout your document. If your body text is 9 points on 12 point leading, stick with that. And if you're using multiple columns, please make sure your text lines up across columns. It can help to make sure all your leading and "space before" values are multiples of the base value (if your body text is on 12-point leading, for example, make all your leading values multiples of 12).

6) BE CREATIVE. The "personality" of your work is partly dependent on the fonts you choose, so choose fonts that look good to you, that are readable, and that don't clash.

7) This one deserves its own item: Never, ever use Comic Sans. Ever. You don't need it. Stay away from it. Pretty much my nightmare document would be one that uses Comic Sans for most purposes, including body text, with Times New Roman added in for "flavor." Aargh!

HTH. HAND. :)
 
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