Best Fonts for Printed Report

Hi kbodiford, welcome to the discussion boards.

Wow, what a question! There is a good reason that there are several thousand fonts to choose from. Choosing a typeface is an artform; choosing which typefaces work well together is also an artform, and a different one from the first! Any professional typographer would probably need to know what the report is about first of all (stock market results, postcolonialist feminist studies, cubist art?), including its intended audience (CEO, school teacher, grandma?), what language it is in (is it in English? does the text contain foreign languages, including mathematical symbols?), plus how long the text is, whether it is for detailed contemplation and reference or just a disposable informational piece, how many pages it needs to be printed on, etc. etc.

If you are unsure about typefaces, I'd recommend that you simply follow the templates that Apple provides. Most are ok.

My tip would be to choose a single typeface, not different ones for title, heading, subheading, subtitle and body. So many different typefaces can look like an exploded carneval on paper (though if the topic of the report is "Practice and Theory Underlying the Use of Explosive Devices in Recreational Urban Spaces", then this might be exactly what you want) :0)

Follow up with some details and maybe we could throw in some suggestions. Or try typophile.com

In the long run, if the people reading the report have no idea about typography and don't really care what the report looks like (or even specifically ask you why it's not set in Times New Roman and Arial), you might not want to waste your time on them.

Palatino was probably the twentieth century's most-used typeface for English text. It has a good even colour and is very crisp and easy to read. It has broad, large, lowercase letters (large x-heights) which makes it certainly good for people who may have vision difficulties. I generally tend toward Aldus in situations where one would use Palatino since Aldus is not as heavy, saving Palatino for headings. But I assume you'll just be using the standard included fonts and not buying fonts just for this project. Just don't space the text too closely.

Some think using a sans serif typeface is better for situations where reading ability may be impaired. I think that's true when you're dealing with road signs, or other fleetingly-seen text, but for a long report I definitely think a sans serif face would make reading more difficult.

The only reservation I have with Palatino and Aldus is that it can be difficult to distinguish between open quotation marks and closing quotation marks. This would only be an issue though if you have a lot of quoted text, but if the quotations are laid out clearly, so you can easily see where they begin and end, then even this shouldn't be a problem.

I think 11 is a good compromise. Anything larger strikes me as display size for Palatino (though I don't wear glasses and am used to reading 10 point type). I don't know how you quantify 'vision impaired', but I imagine 12 point and above would be good for your large type version.

Aldus is just a lighter version of Palatino (both were designed by Hermann Zapf to be part of the same family), so they both look essentially the same. If you want more info check out linotype's page (www.linotype.com/30/aldus-family.html). But I think Aldus is probably too light for your purposes.

All the best with your report.