What is the most readable, appealing font? Besides Wingdings, of course.
I'm not talking programming font, but for design docs, documentation, web pages, etc.
What wins? Times New Roman 10pt, Arial 12pt, Verdana? Anyone have science in addition to their opinion?
It entirely depends on the subject matter. Some typefaces are certainly more legible than others, but as for 'appealing', that is completely subjective.
I've always been a Garamond man. Take that for what its worth.
Personally I've found Myriad Pro to be the best all round font for documents etc.
A rule of thumb that I go by, which I can't remember where I learned from is:
From Wikipedia:
In traditional printing serifed fonts are used for body text because they are considered easier to read than sans-serif fonts for this purpose.
From Wikipedia:
Sans-serif fonts have become the de facto standard for body text on-screen, especially online. It has been suggested this is because the small size of the font causes serif fonts to appear excessively cluttered on the screen.
Did a quick search and found the following article that may be of interest:
Documentation : Calibri (came with Microsoft Word 2007), size at 10.
For web, I try to use standard Font to have something available to everybody (arial, Time news Roman, verdana).
I always use a font called Dolly with LaTeX for documentation and papers. It's awesome.
It depends on your content as well as the presentation method (web pages have different requirements from printed documents, 10pt displays in different sizes depending on the screen resolution etc).
Oh yes, and then it is also a matter of taste...
A few general rules that I picked up from other people:
About the taste part (highly subjective):
A List Apart loves to talk about web design, including typography. I don't know if I'd call their articles scientific but they are thoughtful.
Some Actual Research:
As far as web pages go (I make no assertion about anything else) there's a limited set of common standard fonts of which there are even fewer which are sans-serif (serif should really really be restricted for print).
Of those few I find all readable, but from a personal aesthetic point of view I like the Tahoma and Verdana chains. Arial is fine, but it's too ubiquitous.
Edit: and actual dimensions should not be built into the baseline. Let the user choose their own settings through the browser. Furthermore "pt" is for print media, use "em" or "%" for screen.
The best practice is to use the most readable fonts. Unfortunately, this is more easily said than done. Experts do not always agree which fonts are the most readable or which ones are most appropriate for use.
Have a look at Fonts designed especially for on-screen viewing
And also at Which Are More Legible: Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces?
In doing a bit more reading myself, here is another interesting study on it.
The author's conclusions -- Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
My readers clearly prefer sans serif fonts to serif fonts for body text. Therefore, in my HTML e-mail newsletters -- and on my websites -- I am moving toward 12 pt. Arial for body text, and Verdana for 10 pt. and 9 p. fonts. I haven't done adequate studies comparing Georgia against Verdana for readability, but since Georgia isn't as widely installed as Verdana, I plan to stick with Verdana. For headlines I'll continue to use larger bold Verdana fonts.
Helvetica was already suggested!
Worth mentioning are also the Frutiger fonts by Adrian Frutiger!
As to the question of sans serif for web I think there are cases where serif for titles can be very nice! Renowned agencies use them more often again.
Sans Serif all the way!
In the order of preference: Frutiger, Helvetica, Vardana, Arial.
I personally never liked serifed fonts but if I had to I would use either Lucida or Garamond.
Another favourite of mine is Monotype Prestige Elite -- its the most "typewritery" of the monospaced fonts.
Anadale mono is by far the best fort for code samples, its monospaced and has the clearest distintion between the various parenthesis characters ([{"''"}]).
Read this if you're looking for a summary of a lot of the linked articles. No plagarism, only regurgitation of info.
For print, there's so many fonts. Helvetica is the most popular and one of the more "readable". However a variety of fonts all look really nice, serifs like Bodoni to sans-serifs like Letter Gothic, Futura, or Knockout.
On the screen, fonts with wider letters and a more generous x-height tend to be easier to read. That said, fonts like Verdana are a bit too plain at larger sizes. Helvetica is a great workhorse font for print, as are Frutiger and Univers, but Windows machines most likely lack this font. At small sizes Arial is a poor substitute for Helvetica because of its seemingly narrow letters (due to pixel restrictions), but kern (letter-spacing) it a little tighter at 16px+ sizes and make it bold, and it suddenly will become very usable, especially for building a strong grid. A font with some quirks is always nice and interesting visually, like Trebuchet MS (see the header of this page). These fonts too, have a low x-height and aren't as visually 'clean' to read through.
The solution is Lucida Grande: functional and quirky enough to look "different." Its Windows counterpart is Lucida Sans and Lucida Sans Unicode, which should be on more Windows machines anyway, more than the new Microsoft fonts like Calibri, etc. You'll find that both Windows fonts are needed, Sans looks right with bold text and some sizes, and Unicode looks right with the rest. I think this is the font to use mainly to make long body text look less boring, since it gets tricky to use at various sizes and weights.
Also, from a developer's standpoint, there is nothing as beautiful and functional as a nice monospace font. So it really depends on your content, since if you have a load of copy to fit into a defined area you're better off with Arial. But sites these days see so much Arial being used. Lucida Grande / Sans Unicode is hands down a better font. It's always a good idea to have a pair of complementary fonts, so use a serif font like Georgia (the web's workhorse) and play around with the upper-casing and letter-spacing too.
Not real scientific, but my general preferences are:
Georgia (or other serif fonts) for long runs of text like the body of a document. Even if the "flowing text" studies are questionable, the vast majority of books seems to use serif fonts. (Exception: For small fonts on small DPI displays, the legibility of Verdana may outweigh the benefits of serifs.)
Helvetica (or other sans serif fonts) for short bursts of text like titles, captions, or road signs.
Consolas (or other fixed width font) for short bursts of user input like a website's check-out forms. The more obvious distinctions between each character may help reduce typos.
For any kind of documentation or written correspondence I use Georgia and Verdana since they were specifically designed for the screen.
For the main body of a text, I'd use a serif font (sans serif on paper tend to get tiring) and my personal preference is Goudy Old Style
I use Tahoma. For everything. All the time. I will in fact be naming my next child Tahoma.
Here is the selection I made by extensive research on the web. These fonts are available for free to Windows Vista users, but not necessarily limited to them.
Segoe UI in Vista and Office 2007
Frutiger Linotype comes free with Microsoft Reader
DejaVu Sans download from Sourceforge
Constantia in Vista
p
{
font-family: Verdana,Tahoma,Georgia,Arial,"Times New Roman";
}
Verdana and Tahoma are "fairly" close to fixed width fonts and have solid readability to me. The trade of being they tend to be wider and take more space.
http://bigital.com/english/files/2008/04/web_legibility_readability.pdf
This study puts Verdana on top for reading speed, comprehension and appreciation. It doesn't compare with Microsoft's new Clear type fonts though, just the traditional ones.
i've always like Helvetica myself for titles and then something like garamond for the content, newspaper style.
really depends on what your building and what medium it'll be on, whether it's something short or a massive technical document.
also layout plays a big factor in readability, if you have long lines of text the eye is going to have trouble following it, better to break the sections out to aid readability and enjoyment; a lot you can learn from the common newspaper.
worth watching http://www.helveticafilm.com/
I am personally a fan of Computer Modern (the font that LaTeX documents are typeset in by default). Maybe it's the formatting that LaTeX does, but I find such documents to be extremely readable and nice looking.
For monospace fonts, I am liking the Menlo font that comes with Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
BASKERVILLE OLD FACE!
In my opinion, the most legible font ever, and in the top ten most stylish.
Now if it only had a better name...