I don't think you'll find anything that is specifically well optimized for dyslexic/non-Latin readers, which also comes in a large family of weights and widths.

I'll also note that legibility and efficient character count (including condensed widths) are largely opposed to each other. Newspaper text faces try to walk that line, but they are also optimized for small sizes and don't meet the rest of your needs.

Overall, I'm thinking something in the same general design space as Myriad or Frutiger would seem best suited to the job. Humanist sans, pretty legible, available in a wide range of weights and widths.

Regards,

T

I don't think you can go wrong with Trinité.

Trinite is fabulous, but more for continuous text maybe. For this application I would have a look at PMN Caecilia

Rrrrrr.

Resist the impulse to default to sans. I still say Trinité. It has the condensed and extended widths you require, it has the multiple available extender lengths you require, it's superbly legible, it certainly fills your need for "confidence with a little character and warmth," need I go on?

Other TEFF fonts are designed in similarly versatile ways (see also Lexicon.) The closest Adobe font I can think of is Kepler. Many would dismiss it because of its modern serif tendencies, but I think it's a fine and versatile design, perfectly legible, and certainly not overexposed.

Step away from the sans!

Wait a minute, I love serifed text as much as your next humanist, but I don't see what's wrong with "defaulting to a sans" here. Especially when one is dealing with short tracts of texts, sans serifs can be highly useful.

I'm not saying that a sans must be used here, but I think that it would be silly to rule them out per some sort of dogma.

Here are just some suggestions of humanist sans serifs, with condensed as well as regular weights:

Font Bureau's Benton Sans
http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/font_frames.tpl?cart=10978590829497945&fontname=BentonSans

H&FJ's Gotham
http://www.typography.com/catalog/gotham/index.html

Storm's John Sans
http://www.stormtype.com/jsans.html

Linotype Vialog (this is a slightly narrow face, it has no regular or condensed, but a ton of weights. Originally designed as a signage family, its characters are very easily distinguished from another)
http://www.linotype.com/53981/vialog-family.html

Generally I don't like sans fonts, but for careful, deliberate reading at small sizes they're better than serif fonts. The problem is most sans fonts are more modular (hence more ambiguous) than the typical serif face. I think the ideal here would be a sans that's "quirky" - in the right ways though. One font I might recommend is Burke's Pragma*. And if you go with sans, maybe his FF Parable.

* http://www.hiberniatype.com/Pragma/pragma.html

Also, stay away from highly chirographic* fonts: although they're not as bad as geometrically constructed designs, they're still too formally modular - it's just a less obvious modularity. Look at the b/d/p/q in your average chirographic font: the bowls are too similar. Good for aesthetic harmony, bad for reading.

* Which is a term meaning a design that exhibits the vestiges of handwriting/calligraphy.

hhp

This may sound obvious, but i do know my faces pretty well:

that description sounds like the brief for FF Meta, when i first designed it for the German post office as PT 55 back in 1985. It now even has a condensed version, and it was designed for very small sizes on bad paper with low-res typesetting. It's human, it's warm, it's a Sans. OK, it's overused, but aren't the Frutigers and Myriads even more so?

Ah yes, that would be a good choice, too.

What do you think about all of the suggestions? Have any of them swayed your hand?

Here’s my progress so far:

Round One:
ClearviewOne, Compatil, Corpid, Documenta, Frutiger/FrutigerNext, Info, Kievit, Meta, Myriad, Parisine, PMN Caecilia, Syntax, Transit, Thesis

Round Two:
ClearviewOne, Corpid?, Meta, Myriad, Thesis

I’ll have to spend some time with these behemoths to decide further.

Going into this I initially thought of Myriad and Meta as the most obvious choices. Mr. Spiekermann you were right on target with the suggestion of Meta. Thank you for posting.

As far as sans serif vs. serif, I think a mild slab-serif might have use - eg. de Groot’s TheMix. I think true serif faces may be too delicate and not representative of Vancouver.

Thanks everyone – I’ll be back