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

Less than Very High Quality

• Type from a lower resolution printer or some cheap color printers cannot retain subtle design characteristics, such as very fine lines or delicate serifs.

• A copy machine or a fax machine also loses some of the fine details in the reproduction process.

• Inexpensive paper, especially newsprint, absorbs ink and loses even more, sometimes to the point of filling in the counters (those spaces inside letters like e or d).

For any of the poorer conditions, choose a typeface that has sturdy serifs, no fine lines, and a larger x-height with open counters, such as those shown below. Most sans serifs will hold up very well under any conditions, and are the easiest to read onscreen due to their simplicity of form. Also look through ...