Perhaps something along the lines of architectural blueprints – a rounded sans like Bryant or Gotham Rounded?

Sun or Taz from Lucas de Groot

Mikey :-)

Chevin is quite informational in appearance , but with a bit of character.

Nick Cooke

Choose a font that has a clearly different numeral 1, capital I, and lowercase l.

I've always wanted to try Mercury or Whitman for my tech pubs and new business proposals. I might also try substituting Starling for TNR and see if anyone notices.

Other fonts I've considered in this context include:

Andulka
Anziano
Arnhem
Comenia
Eudald
Farnham
Freight
Kingfisher
Laurentian
Lexicon
Merlo
Nosta
Relato
Rongel
Swift 2.0

Hi again:

I would choose a sans for the text for vertical and horizontal compactness... however Minion is a good choice tho, but you might like Karmina too (it has a little more personality without giving up the efficiency): http://www.type-together.com/Karmina

I almost forgot—FF UNIT. This font is dead center neutral and is compact too:
http://www.fontshop.com/search/?q=unit&x=0&y=0

Mikey :-)

could be a job for univers?

Just took a look at FF Slab Unit I think I may try to convince the powers that be to buy that one.

I second Univers

You might look at Kepler, by the same designer as Minion. There are many variants of weight, width and optical size, but you can get the four basic styles inexpesively as a part of Adobe Type Basis OpenType Edition.

I have to dissent against Univers—the default choice for annual reports and manuals for eons and it has the personality of a CAT scan.

Flama accomplishes the same things, has more personality (but is still neutral) and costs significantly less... and not everyone and their grandmothers design agency uses it.

http://www.felicianotypefoundry.com/main/?page_id=10

or here

http://www.vllg.com/Feliciano/

Mikey :-)

ha ha "personality of a CAT scan"..I will have to use that in a sentence this week!