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

Display Type and Body Text

If you have a display face, don’t use it in body text! If the computer takes a display face and reduces it, those delicate thins and serifs will be so weak in the smaller size that they’ll fall apart when it prints. Remember, if the face was designed at 36-point and you print it at 9, the computer will just reduce everything in the entire face to a quarter of the original. Even if it prints well because you use a high-quality press, it will be less readable than the regular font at the smaller size.

Several of Adobe’s OpenType fonts include optical size variations to make it possible to use a font designed for the size of type you are setting. “Opticals” include variations for captions (6–8 point), regular type (9–13 ...