Verdana undoubtly for me, or a similar to Galfra designed by Ladislas Mandel for the Post company in France.

How small? If it's really tiny, you might want to consider a pixel font. Especially, if it's going to be read on screen.

Here a nice list of foundries with available pixel fonts: http://websitetips.com/fonts/pixel/

if you need it to read well, consider making it HTML text.

How small?
Do you have a b&w versus grayscale preference?

hhp

Thanks all for the replies.

The thing is that this tiny type is going to be optimized as image —yes, I know the best would be to do it as HTML.

I noticed that Univers in very small sizes 9 pt roman using sharp is very readable but I find the typeface very cold. (eventough at that size might not matter)
I would like to find another one...that maybe goes well with Bembo or Bodoni.

Hrant: I would prefer b&w.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts

patty

As you seem to suspect, you're not going to get a lot of "warmth"
at 9 pt (which if you're on a Mac is 9 PPEM) especially in b&w.
And there's nowhere near enough resolution to try to match this
or that outline font...

If you're sure you don't want anti-aliasing* then there's a website
that lets you fool with all kinds of settings and shows you comparisons
of bitmap font renderings... except I don't remember what the site was.
Help guys!

* Which BTW does not need to mean blurry:
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/manademo/

hhp

unibody in pretty warm for a pixel font at small size.

I've use unibody I love the italics, thanks Underware!,

In this job I cannot use it though, :o(

thanks Hrant I didn't know of Mana

patty

Unibody does not have an Italic (in the useful sense of the word).
What it has is a Cursive (which is unusable for emphasis).

Mana's smallest size is 11, but I could make a 9.

hhp