Some Tips on How to Choose a Typeface

Let’s face it; choosing a typeface can be tricky … there is so much choice!

The beauty and complexity of type, combined with an inexhaustible supply of options to evaluate can make your head spin.

But don’t be baffled, and don’t despair.

While there are no easy-to-follow rules on how best to choose a typeface, there are many tried-and-trusted principles you can quickly learn and apply to make an appropriate typeface choice.

Let’s look at some of the key factors:

What is your Goal?

The first thing you have to do is form a strong impression in your mind about how your audience to react to the text. You might provide this impression, or it might be dictated to you by your client, or it may be determined by your audience.

Whatever the case, your choice of typeface needs to strike a good combination of both legibility and readability, while remaining appropriate for the audience and the message.

Legibility

It may seem at first glance that legibility and readability are the same thing … but they are not!

Legibility refers to the design of the typeface, as in the width of the strokes, whether or not it has serifs, the presence of novel type design elements etc.

Generally speaking, it is often better to choose typefaces with conventional letterforms.

Readability

How your typeface is set, combined with the basic legibility of the typeface, yields a certain level of readability. Readability is the dynamic interaction of the type style, size, tracking, leading, colour and other properties all combined into one overall impression.

They add up to a typographic style which has a quantifiable degree of readability.   

In most cases, communication comes before style, so resolve readability first.

And, of course, it’s always a good idea to talk it through with your printer, who will gladly share knowledge and experience with you.