IT2000 Design

Fonts

You will probably have hundreds of fonts, or text styles (and that's styles in the normal sense rather
than the confusing Microsoft Word use of the term!), and will no doubt have some that you use a lot
and others that you seldom or never use. It is possible to reduce the long list that appears whenever
you want to change text and I used to recommend this to speed things up but now most modern PCs
can cope with several hundred without complaint and there are good reasons for having even the
ones you don't expect ever to use. However, if you really want to delete some you can and
instructions are provided later.

These notes just cover the basics which you may need to know to do assignments which specify
things like serif or sans serif and include some samples and a few points to keep in mind.

Serif and sans serif

If you look at letters carefully you'll see that some have curly bits and some don't. The ones with
curly bits are serif fonts and the plain-looking ones are sans serif. In French, sans=without.

T T
Serif Sans serif

It's not always as obvious as this

T T
Serif Sans serif

But you'll get the idea!

Other people's fonts

Something you have to remember when thinking about using a particular favourite is that if you
send the file to someone who hasn't got that font then their software will use a substitute. These
substitutes may be quite different, unfortunately, and completely ruin any nice effect that you had
planned! It is quite common, for instance for Courier New to be used which is like an old typewriter
and may be disastrous!

As you can see from the illustrations, fonts often have very different letter width and height – all the
illustrations above use size 54. (If you want more information about where the size comes from in
the first place just type font size into a search engine and check out some of the explanations
provided – you'll then see why I shall not attempt to do so here!)

So if you're doing something which you may wish to print using another machine, transferring a file
from home to work, for instance, or which you send as an attachment to a friend or client, then
beware! You'll be safe with things like Arial and Times New Roman and even some more distinct
ones like Britannic Bold and Comic Sans and there's plenty more which reasonably up-to-date
Windows users can cope with easily but it's always a good idea to check.

Sending fonts to people

Windows stores all your fonts in a folder called Fonts which you can access from the Control Panel.
Any font can be copied to a disk or USB drive or whatever and then, on the receiving machine go to
its Fonts folder and use File|Install new font and follow the simple procedure to add it to that
computer.

Sending fonts by e-mail is a good idea but I find that I have to drag a font from the Fonts folder to
the e-mail in order to attach it properly. Check that when you drag and drop it does actually leave a
copy of the font on your machine! I have moved fonts instead of copying them on several occasions.
Use the right mouse button to drag and drop and you'll get the choice of copy or move.

Printers

Another problem is, of course, whether the printer can handle the font. Even if your wonderful text
looks great on all the equipment you want it to not all printers can handle the fancier varieties.
Indeed, one student had spent hours on an advanced CLAIT presentation assignment which
stipulated a sans serif font. She'd used something which looked fine on the college pcs but printed
not only in Serif form but also italic! Anyone who knows how awkward OCR examiners can be will
appreciate my dilemma! I was particularly thrown by this as the college equipment didn't exactly
have a wide array of strange fonts. Even quite normal looking ones can go wrong.

Web design

here is another major problem. There are only a few fonts which can really be relied upon. Whilst
advanced html code people may be able to force certain styles for the vast majority of us anything
other than the few listed below will simply be substituted by the viewer's browser for one of those
few – and probably not the one you would prefer either! Courier, again, springs to mind and will
spring onto people's screens where something much more attractive was intended. Add to that the
different widths and heights and what may have fitted perfectly on a single line appears on two
when viewed elsewhere and can totally wreck a page layout.

At present, the only safe fonts are the following:

Arial Times New Courier Georgia Verdana
Roman
Tahoma Impact Comic Sans Trebuchet Monotype

The last one is Wingdings1. All the above are size 12, incidentally. No, there's not much scope for
design! You may get away with a wider selection as several others are pretty common nowadays but
these are the only ones that can be described as pretty universal.

If you do need to have something unusual then you'll need to create an image of that text instead or,
possibly use Flash if you have it. Images are best for true universality and then you can really go to
town without worrying – although it will increase the file size and download time which may be
noticeable on dial-up connections so don't overdo it.
General design

the purpose of this notes is not to go into detail on text design – there are others available for that –
but as a general rule, good design should not mix different types of a similar style. For example,
don't mix Times with Georgia or Arial with Tahoma. Most documents – even posters and DTP
work – will be best with just a couple of fonts, a serif one for large text and sans serif for the rest, or
vice versa. Use bold and italic sparingly. It is usually better to use a large font size in normal setting
and clicking on bold seldom improves things. Italic is pretty much old hat these days. Try adding a
shadow, or using different colours, especially greys and blacks, or outline letters for large text.
These are all available in Word these days.

Examples

Serif Sans serif

Accord AlgeriAn Abadi Condensed Adventurer
Bernard Condensed Courier New Andy Arial Rounded
Cairo Dolphin Arial Black Arial Narrow
Felix Titling Harrington Bauhaus Brittanic Bold
Imprint Shadow Monotype Corsiva Century Gothic Comic Sans
Old English Playbill Franklin Gothic Gill Sans Ultra
Pretext Rockwell Impact Prisoner
Seabird Snap ITC Stylistic Technical

The above are all size 12. The script-like fonts and fancier ones have been excluded as they tend to
be allocated categories of their own. If you look at some closely you will see that many script fonts
which you think out to be serif are, in fact, not and some of the chunky, sans serif-looking ones do
actually have a few extra stokes so shouldn't be classed sans serif after all. Stick to ones such as
those shown if it is essential to have one or the other. The more common Times New Roman, Arial
etc are not included in the table as you'll probably know them well.

Note

You may be wondering how you can see all these fonts in their true glory without having them
installed on your pc – and you may be viewing this on a web site too. Well, I have had to abandon
Microsoft Word for this task and use the free Open Office word processor instead. This allows easy
saving of files in pdf format which can be viewed on any machine (with Adobe Reader installed) –
and printed. Another solution for you, too, if you need it.