Non-Designer’s Type Book, The, Second Edition

The Most Readable

The typefaces that make the most readable text are the classic oldstyle serif faces (remember those from Chapter 1?), either remakes of the original ones or new faces built on oldstyle characteristics. These typefaces were originally designed for long documents, since that’s all there was in print at that time (late fifteenth to early seventeenth century). There were no brochures, advertising, business cards, packaging, freeway signs—there were only books. Big books. (In fact, it was Aldus Manutius, whose face made it into the 20^th century on software packaging, who printed the first portable books in 1495.)