When there are thousands of typefaces readily available, and more being designed each day, you must learn how to choose a typeface.

Choosing a suitable face depends upon several factors:

Visual Interest: Aesthetics and Impact

As with any graphic design, creating visual interest is paramount. Creating or selecting a typeface for its aesthetic value and the impact it will have on screen or in print is as important as creating a visual. The individual characteristics of a typeface matter greatly to communication and how well any typeface will integrate with the characteristics of the visuals. Each typeface should be evaluated for its characteristics, aesthetic value based on proportion, balance, visual weight, positive and negative shapes of each individual letter, as well as shape relationships between and among letters. Realizing how display type will be seen in context – up close, its impact from a distance, where it is seen, lighting conditions, and more—should be a consideration. How a typeface looks as display or text must be tested and evaluated.

Appropriateness: Concept

Before you choose a typeface, clearly define the audience, tone, personality and attitude of what you are trying to communicate and how you want to say it. This will help you strategically choose the right font to ensure successful communication.

Very often, beginning students and nondesigners simply don’t know hot to choose a typeface and they choose it for their attractiveness and do not consider the concept or have little understanding of what a typeface connotes, of its history, and of its provenance. For example, choosing a face associated with a period, such as art deco, or associated with an era or industry carries meaning, even if you aren’t aware of it. This is where knowing type classifi cations and history comes strongly into play. For example, would you use American nineteenth-century wood type for a magazine article about the history of East Asia? Or would it be sound to use Tobias Frere-Jones’s typeface Whitney (for the Whitney Museum in New York) for a catalog for the Prado Museum in Madrid or for a dog food brand?

Clarity: Readability and Legibility

If typography is readable and legible, then content should be clearly understood. Essentially, ensuring readability means text is easy to read, thereby making reading enjoyable (and frustration-free) as well as interesting. How you design with a suitable typeface, with considerations of size, spacing, margins, color, and paper selection, contributes to readability. Legibility has to do with how easily a person can recognize the letters in a typeface—

how the characteristics of each individual letterform are distinguished.

Typefaces that are too light or too heavy may be difficult to read, especially in smaller sizes.

Typefaces with too much thick–thin contrast may be difficult to read if they are set very small – the thin strokes may seem to disappear.

Condensed or expanded letters are more difficult to read because the forms of the letters change, as well as appearing to merge together when condensed and dissociate when expanded.

Text type set in all capitals is diffi cult to read. Opinions differ on whether all caps enhance or diminish readability for display type.

Greater value contrast between type and background increases readability.

Highly saturated colors may interfere with readability.

People tend to read darker colors first.

Relationship: Integration with Visuals

With literally thousands of typefaces available, selecting a typeface may seem daunting. Every designer that knows how to choose a typeface is mindful of the relationship between type and visuals.

When integrating type and visuals based on the design concept, answering the following questions can guide your decisions:

Should the typeface share visual characteristics ?

Should the typeface be neutral and allow the visual to drive the solution?

Should the typeface dominate the solution?

Should the typeface contrast with the characteristics of the visuals?

Would handmade letters work best with the visuals?

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