Fonts can be your BFF! A lesson in font management by yours truly

In the beginning there was papyrus and a quill pen. People were so happy to have something to read, they didn’t give a darn what it looked like.

Many years passed and the personal computer was born. Along with it came the convenience of being able to create camera ready pages.

With the convenience, however, came a real pain in the butt for journalism teachers.

FONTS. Millions of fonts.

What they didn’t realize is that often they were cheapening the look of their design and even more often, not communicating clearly.

So guys like Bobby went without girlfriends because they didn’t know who had written to them.

One day a teacher, in her infinite wisdom, decided it was time to explain fonts to her students. They were beside themselves with excitement and eagerly raised their hands to answer the questions she posed as she shared her font-ness.

She explained that there are three RACES of fonts: SERIF SANS SERIF DECORATIVE

SERIF fonts have feet f Notice the little ski jump thingies at the bottom of the letters.

Feet propel the eye from one letter to the next, making SERIF fonts the most likely candidates for body text. This is Times Roman, a very common SERIF font and a very likely choice for most body texts. It is readable and clean. This is ARIAL which does not have feet and is not as friendly in huge doses of text. You really don’t see it used often for body text.

SANS SERIF fonts do not have feet f Notice there are no little ski jump thingies at the bottom of the letters.

So, here is the first question. What are the three races of fonts? We have to get this or we won’t graduate!

SERIF

SANS SERIF

Decorative

Yippee!!

Now let’s complicate it a little. Take the three races and break them down. Within each race are FAMILIES. You can’t mix families in the same race. You can use one family from the SERIF race and one from the SAN SERIF.

Now look what you can do with one family of SANS SERIF type. This is brown headline This is the subhead which is still in the brown family Here is body text that is still in the family and works well with the headline and subhead text ooHere is body text that is still in the family and works well with the headline and subhead text Here is body text that is still in the family and works well with the headline and subhead text

Increase readability by switching the body text to a serif family. This is brown headline This is the subhead which is still in the brown family Here is body text that is still in the family and works well with the headline and subhead text ooHere is body text that is still in the family and works well with the headline and subhead text Here is body text that is still in the family and works well with the headline and subhead text

Bobby is happy!

And so is Suzette!