If this person wants it to be readable, and suggested Arial, they don't know much about text and readability. With its relatively closed counterforms, Arial tends to be harder to read by those with poor eyesight than, well, lots of things. If you and he are convinced that a sans serif is the way to go, use a more humanist sans with more open counterforms. Frutiger and Myriad come to mind, but there are many other choices.

Regards,

T

A couple of things came to mind as I read your post:

- Arial is not a great choice for body copy. For the kind of longish stories that a newspaper typically carries, a serif typeface is generally considered a better (more readable) choice. Times New Roman started life as a newspaper "font" -- if your type options are limited, pick Times over Arial.

- If the senior paper is also a tabloid, then a 3-column layout may yield columns that are too wide for comfortable, quick reading. Even with the larger type size you're proposing, a 4-, 5- or even 6-column approach might work better.

- Are you familiar with the Society of Newspaper Designers? Among other things, they publish a design annual that might be a good source for inspiration.
http://www.snd.org

- Mario Garcia is a well-known newspaper designer who recently published a book on the topic called "Pure Design." Lots of basic, useful information.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0972469605/qid=1098684488/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-0823421-5853518?v=glance&s=books

- Workflow tips: Before you start production on the first issue set up style sheets and master pages for the publication. Consider having all of your text (heads, decks, etc.) use leading that is a multiple of the body copy's leading, and have everything snap to the baseline grid. (This can be set up as part of the style sheet.)

Hopefully some of the other publication designers that frequent these parts will chime in with more suggestions. Good luck!

he would like to run at least 26 pages

How would you do that? Unless you can print single, 2-sided sheets, newspapers, especially tabloids, are made up of spreads printed front and back and folded in the middle. The total page number does therefore have to be a multiple of 4. If the printing press can print 2 of those signatures at the same time, they would be folded in the middle and trimmed in the press (it you�re printing web rather than sheet offset), making 8 pages the minimum book. 3 of those books would make 24 pages, etc.

Ok so Arial is out and I will look into something else.

So it seems if I want to go with a biger font size I should definatly go with more than 3 columns. I think going with a biger font size is a good idea because a lot of elderly have bad eyes.

With the 26 pages I am not sure what thats all about. I will call the printing press and see what the deal is.

Thanks for all the feedback please send more my way!

12 points is big enough (too much I would say) for most types and certainly for a newspaper. If you find that it still looks small for you, maybe you should try a widest font.

http://www.tiresias.org/fonts/ this is a font designed for blind/partially sighted readers.
Surprisingly, the RNIB recommends Arial at 14/21-28 pt as a font to use for people with sight problems, I agree with the comments above that it is not the first (or even fourth) choice.
Tim

surprisingly, the RNIB recommends Arial

Not surprisingly. That is all they know, just like most of the recent testers. As long as legibility tests keep comparing Arial to Times, the poor readers won�t be any better off. Don�t forget: you are comparing shite against shite. Times was good for newspaper printed letterpress, 70 years ago. Arial has the birth defect of being Helvetica�s illegitimate twin (same widths, different face). The last decade or so has brought many amazing new typefaces which have all benefited from both better technology and improved understanding of legibility on our side (the type designers, that is). If the Royal National Institute for the Blind (not everybody may know the abbreviation) would do their work properly, they would ask experts from outside the narrow world of Window-nerds.

Tiresias thread - http://www.typophile.com/cgibin/discus.pl?pg=prev&topic=4100&page=12103

The "official" Arial recommendations are indeed not surprising, and it's due to the confounding of legibility/deliberative_reading versus readability/immersive_reading. And although typographic practioners don't [seem to] have enough answers either, one thing they can certainly do is alert the field scientists that something is very wrong. These two worlds are what some of us have been trying to reconcile, to fuse together what they know best; the best attempt so far was this year's Thessaloniki conference.

hhp

and it's due to the confounding of legibility/deliberative_reading versus readability/immersive_reading.

No, Hrant, it�s not. Arial is simply not a very legible typeface, whatever conditions you test it under. Even with familarity (because it�s on everybody�s computer) on its side, it would test badly against a lot of other faces, given the same conditions. It is obvious that it�ll look better at 9pt on screen than Times. But that doesn�t mean Times is a bad typeface, nor does it mean that Arial is a good one. If you compared Arial on screen to Lucida or Verdana or a few other, well-hinted Sans faces, they would come out miles ahead. And then you see some of the test pages, and they�re testing white-out-of-blue lines of 140 characters! In the end they tell us that users prefer reading wider lines to narrow columns. Of course they would, if the choice is straining your eyes along a long line or scrolling down to the floor. If these people had only the slightest idea that typography is an integrated application, and that you cannot separate type from space from contrast from colour, they would find out that things people find easy to read haven�t changed very much since the 1400s.

Well, as far as I can tell what you're describing is pretty much what I meant! The fact that Arial is particularly bad -even for a sans- is sort of circumstantial.

hhp

I meant that the font was funded by RNIB (I meant to put in a link but got distracted) http://www.tiresias.org/fonts/acknowledgements_info.htm (It would have made more sense with it.). I can only suppose that the recommendations are for people with a narrow selection of fonts.
Tim

Hey thanks guys for all the posts. Some of it was a little over my head even with having an art degree. But this wasnt my field of study. I will have to see when I get all the copy what font I do settle on.

Besides Myriad and Frutiger I would still like to here some other suggestions as well.

So I have some time to work on a name plate. Please tell which one you like and what you would change or add to any of them.

They are listed A,B,C,D starting from the top.

http://www.photodump.com/direct/favek/name-plate-page.jpg

Besides Myriad and Frutiger I would still like to here some other suggestions as well.

If it has to be a sans.
There are many but to name a couple of my personal favourites:

-Legacy Sans (& Serif)
-Meta
-Syntax
-Scala Sans (& serif)
-Gill Sans