Font for Book Layout

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    • #101802

      I am getting ready to typeset a book. This is kind of a part 2 to a book that I put together 15 years ago. The book is non-fiction and has true stories about my fathers life as a cattle trader, livestock photographer, western artist, etc…

      With the first book, I delved in and did a bunch of research on laying out a book. I remember that I joined a forum of people that worked typesetting books. I learned a lot about widows and orphans, Em dash, En dash, etc…

      I decided to use Brioso for my main font on that first book. Some people told me I was nuts, but it seemed to look good. I had/have the full Brioso Pro font that shipped with that version of ID back then. (3.0?) (maybe it was a bonus download at the time?) I used Brioso Display for the Chapter titles, Brioso regular for body text, Briso Italic with Swash for running chapter, book and page numbers. Brioso Bold for Drop Cap. I used Myriad Pro semibold for captions and I don’t think I used any other fonts in the book.

      Looking back at that old book, I don’t think that the captions were a good fit with the Brioso text.

      Thought I would do a Google search on recommended book fonts.

      Baskerville is in almost every list. I like this font it is readable and seems to flow good on the page. With the typekit, I only have Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic. That is probably enough. I might continue to use Brioso for the Chapter titles and running stuff.

      I looked at Adobe Garamond Pro and it seems like a good font, but I can’t get over the width of the capital H. It looks about a forth too wide. It jumps off the page and bothers me.

      I have extended font sets in the following fonts:

      Brioso Pro (44 variants)
      Garamond Premier Pro (34 variants)
      Adobe Jenson Pro (8 variants)
      Minion Pro (10 variants)
      Myriad Pro (20 variants)
      Sitka (24 variants) I think this is a Microsoft font?
      Warnock Pro (23 variants)
      There may be more, but those are ones I found right away.

      Minion and Warnock are very readable fonts, but seem to look blacker on the page. Not sure, but I think Minion for sure has thicker and taller characters at the same font size compared to Baskerville.

      I guess I am posting this for some kind of feedback in selecting a font for a book. Balancing that selection with the fonts I have or the fonts available to me from the Adobe Type Kit.

      Thanks, -Kirk

    • #101829

      Well, I don’t like Baskerville. Once I started setting some type I noticed that the version that I have doesn’t have proper small caps or proportional old style numerals.

      I have set a couple chapters in Minion Pro and it is easy to read, but I am not sure I like the way it looks. I am using Hyphenation, Justification, and Keeps settings Nigel French recomended in his article on Feb 7 in InDesign Secrets. https://creativepro.com/designing-books.php

      I have a lot of Yellow highlighted lines.

    • #101840

      How will you be printing the book? Will you be distributing digitally as well as printing? Warnock is good at lower resolutions; Adobe Text Pro (via CC sub.) as well, though it is a bit narrower. Both Garamond and Jenson are lovely typefaces to work with but I have found they need printing at higher quality than a quick printer usually offers. Nothing wrong with Minion though I think it has been overused of late.

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