Successful Typeface

As Kathleen Burke Yoshida states in her article “Avoiding Typeface Errors”, using the best typeface can best convey the desired purpose of literary piece. In order to ensure that the correct typeface is being used, the typeface’s legibility (“how distinct, clear, and recognizable its letters are”), readability (“how easy it is to read in a text line”), and personality (“what feeling it conveys”) should comply with the typographic choice made.

Say, for example, we apply the typeface of century schoolbook. I am choosing this particular typeface because this is the standard font style applied at my employer – CME LLC of CMPMedica. Let’s investigate why our editorial department decided to implement this in our newsletter, Oncology News International.

To evaluate legibility, I had examined the edges of the letters, namely tops and bottoms as recommended by Yoshida in her article, by placing a piece of paper over the top or bottom half of a word or sentence. When I attempted to do so, I found the words “New Century Schoolbook”, easy to decipher by looking at the top half of the letters. I did the same for the bottom half, but it was not as easy to decipher as it was read from the top. Overall, I find this typeface fairly legible.

As Yoshida states in her article, the readability of the century schoolbook typeface is determined by its white space, type size, and typeface variations. To check for the appropriateness of white space, I had allowed for 1 and then 2 additional points of white space between lines for body text. Since I generally work in a 12-point font, I set the line leading at 13 and then 14 points. I then set the line leading at one or two points greater than the point size of the text. Overall, the white space was not in over excess, but instead accommodated enough readability so that text within a newsletter or journal article can provide as much informational text in the smallest amount of space possible (which many publishers aim for to maintain cost-effective printing solutions).

In further determining readability, I took the liberty of comparing various type sizes and typeface variations, which tend to be implied hand-in-hand. By convention, century schoolbook is used for the entire text, but if it serves as the title, it will always be in a large, consistent font size and typeface variations of bolding, italicizing, and utilizing colored font (primarily red) are also common.

As Yoshida points out, this means that the title must be at least 2-points higher in size than the body. In the case of the newsletters that my company produces, the style follows very much in sync with the standard newspaper, as shown above.

The remaining text is in the standard 12-point font, and arranged in a layout that further encourages readability by the sufficient use of white space and implementing appropriate background colors that would not distract the reader from understanding the articles of the newsletter.

The combination of white space usage, type size, and typeface variations contribute much to the personality of the newsletter. The usage of century schoolbook matches the purpose of the newsletter – to educate the community oncologist on the latest research and address emerging trends in treatment. When an oncologist reads the newsletter, every aspect of the piece should evoke professional and intellectually-stimulating reading.