🚀 go-pugleaf

>Let's face it, this is all a matter of opinion.  Personally I think that
>when you're publishing text in a small point size, you're better off using 
>Bembo (or similar font that looks good at small sizes) rather than a smaller
>master of Palatino (or similar font that looks good at medium sizes).

Just as a side discussion, can anyone recommend a good serif postscript font
that would look good coming off a 300DPI machine and survive Xerography
and/or offset printing legibly? I'm currently using 10pt Palatino for my
stuff, but would love to go to a 9pt font if I could find one that could
handle some abuse... I'm thinking of Galliard, but I'm not convinced.

>But this is exactly why they're often used in advertising copy-- Madison
>Avenue sure doesn't want you to actually *read* that stuff.

I don't agree with this comment. First, in large point sizes, Sans Serif
fonts can be quite eye-catching. This is headline size material, not text.

The reason sans-serif is used in lots of advertising is simple. Ad's almost
invariably have more text to display than you normally have room for. Sans
Serif fonts tend to be more compact, so you can fit more text into a given
number of square inches. You give up legibility, but for short pieces of
text (third page, half page) you can get away with that. The alternative
would be a smaller point sized serif font, which would have legibility 
problems and generally looks cramped compared to the same text in a larger
sans serif.

>It's odd that Helvetica-- the most popular sans-serif font in the US-- is
>also one of the worst (Avant Garbage is the worst).

I've always been amazed at the propensity to shove Helvetica at anything you
might consider a headline. ugly, ugly, ugly. If I see another
fanzine/newsletter/memo/etc with Times body text and Helvetica headlines I
think I'll fwow up. And Avant Garde is worse -- the only possible reason
Adobe/Apple put THAT in the LW+ Roms was because they really want people to
buy downloadable fonts....

>Many widely-cited studies are often used to support positions that the
>original studies cannot support.  For example, an IBM study showing that
>ragged-right *typewritten* text is more legible than right-justified text
>is often cited by people who believe in ragged-right *typeset* text with
>religious fervor.  The original study didn't even consider typeset text,
>so its conclusions should not be applied to typeset text.  With typeset
>text, I find right-justified text more legible than ragged-right, but in
>the case of monospaced text, I agree with the IBM study.

Again, it depends. OtherRealms is ragged right because I find that trying to
do a three-column/justified/10pt_Palatino page makes the page too grey and
stressful to read. Going back to ragged right makes it easier to track the
columns and brightens the page with more white space. If I were using a 
smaller point size and if I could increase the width of the column gutters
and if I could increase the size of the margins, I'd probably feel
differently, but if you've got a page with lots of text, justifiication
tends to increase it's tendency to gray out and look cramped and makes it
harder to read.

Which is why even when you disagree with studies that over-generalize, it's
not a good idea to generalize. Layout and Graphic Design is a big gray area
and there are very, very few definite rights and wrongs. What you have to do
is figure out what's right and wrong for a given instance (which is why
top line graphic designers make lots of money....)

Chuq Von Rospach			chuq@sun.COM		Delphi: CHUQ

                         Things without all remedy should be without regard.
                                 What's done is done. (Shakespeare, Macbeth)