Thursday 5 May 2011

A short note on typefaces...

Helvetica, Franklin Gothic, Adobe Caslon Pro: these are are all very well known typefaces I've been dabbling with in the prototype phase, and I thought I'd best explain my reasoning for this.

Firstly, as I've mentioned before, many free fonts don't support Bosnian. In fact, this point alone has culled the list of possible fonts considerably. In addition, many free fonts don't have the attention to detail or the professional design level needed for large blocks of text. Not only could you waste hours trawling through free font websites, but possibly even longer tweaking the kerning and leading, etc.

This brings us to my second point. While it is preferable to take advantage of professionally designed typefaces that have an extensive font family and language support, it's not always part of a project's budget - and is certainly not feasible for this project. For many design studios, this is a cost that is absorbed while working on paid projects.

A type foundry such as Hoefler & Frere-Jones, for instance, has some wonderfully designed fonts to choose from, and you could spend half a day and the GDP of a small nation having all the type fun in the world.

Instead, if you don't have the budget to explore these options, it's a better practice to explore the possibilities of what you already have, and get to know what your typefaces can really do. Limited resources doesn't have to mean limited ideas: you still need to know what typeface will do the best job and why.

No comments:

Post a Comment