full circle magazine - #1 released!

Posted Jun 11, 2007 2:27 UTC (Mon) by jordanb (subscriber, #45668) [Link]

I'm not sure what evidence you could possibly have for this. Find me a sans font more readable (not to mention beautiful) than, say Palentino, or the better variations of Jenson.

I've seen it argued that sans is better for on-line display on account of the deficient resolution of displays (compare my LCD panel's 90ppi to my printer's draft mode of 300dpi, or its quality mode of 1200dpi). Still I think this is exacerbated by poor hinting and anti aliasing and isn't intrinsic to the style of font.

As a poll of professional typesetters, look at pretty much any book, it will have a serifed font for the body text. In my reading I can only recall a few poorly-typeset computer books that use a sans font. I'm going to guess from my experience that something like 99% of all substantial works typeset by professionals for the page use serifed fonts.

> but even I wouldn't dare to use LaTeX for something that
> needs an even moderately complicated layout.

Please note that I said TeX rather than LaTeX. LaTeX does tend to make it difficult to deviate too far from its predefined styles and probably would be a poor tool for them to use.

On the question of "complicated layout," however that's pretty much the reason why I suggested TeX. Less is more when you're trying to produce anything more serious than People Magazine, and even People Magazine is less layout-heavy than these magazines. I think TeX would help force better behavior.

> it's that they chose an unattractive Comic Sans-like font

Their font doesn't look anything like comic sans, except for the rounded ends in the bold. It's too symmetrical, and with no forward lean. If I had to guess I'd say it's some bastardization of grotesque. I agree, though, that beyond the serif vs. sans question, this font in particular is a poor choice.