……any sample?



David Hamuel

Your problem could be whether the figures are tabular or not.

Tabular figures look better when you stack a phone number and a fax number.

I believe Scala Sans old style figures are proportional, so perhaps not a good choice.

I consistently find myself making changes or redesigns to a batch of ID packages that someone did before I was around this place. Many of the old packages have old style figures.

I really like old style figures, but every time I redo a card and change the numerals to lining, someone says “that looks so much better.”

I’ll have to agree with them. As a general rule, I believe that lining numerals are better for stationery systems. In this context, they are more readable for those with poor vision. And as Nick said, they do look cleaner when stacked.

But there is always the exception.

Imo, OSF is the way to go in stationery design, if the font allows for it. They simply visually fit in better with miuscle letterforms and make for a more lively reading. In tables, of course, lining (or better still monospaced tabular) figures are what you need, but in brochures, books, stationery and anything that adheres to the general rules of what makes reading text easier, OSF is nicer. Also, to me, it looks more professional, not as run-of-the-mill… OSF are anything but old-stlye, I think. Actually, I much prefer them to the lining figures that came up during the 70s and 80s,when you even had lining figures on Renaissance fonts like Garamond and the like, which clearly need OSFs. :-D.

ATF gave their Garamond lining figures in the early 20th century.

hhp

Hrant — sorry, I forgot about that. But early 20th cent was when LFs became fashionable, as many

>They simply visually fit in better with miuscle letterforms

Assuming your are using such letter forms.

>to me, it looks more professional, not as run-of-the-mill

Many times, in the case if stationery, it looks to me as if the designer is using OSF be overly clever and is inoring the utility of what the medium is. It needs to be clear above all.

I’m a sucker for OSFs. There is a certain sophistication to them, and it’s one of the tell-tale signs of whether something is professionally set (this sounds really superficial, just generally speaking). When I was in high school designing newsletters and magazines, I so much wanted expert sets so I could be more of a typographer rather than a desktop publisher!

Though OSFs can look terribly fuzzy for certain things. Like for general word-processing tasks like an invoice or letter, I tend to stay away from OSF even when I’m using a typeface that has them — ITC Charter, more often than not. Charter’s lining numerals are beautiful though. Georgia is a very nice general purpose font, but the lack of lining numerals would be very problematic for people like accountants.

How about ‘short’ lining numerals? For example in Bell? Or Miller? They don’t jump out at you in continuous text, and look ‘lively’ enough to be interesting. I would be happy to do without OSFs for these typefaces.

How about lining old-style figures? They line up in neat columns and jump up and down. A nice addition, I think. Many of Adobe’s Pro fonts have them.

I think for people like me who don’t like numbers, OSFs are more pleasant to read. At least they don’t look so monotonous. And I tend to think that they even help me read them better (shape recognition, just like caps vs lowercase).

For me, definitely OSFs on business cards. But how about ISBN numbers and such?

Have you noticed certain designers/firms don’t use OSFs at all? Like Massimo Vignelli, and Pentagram. They are trying to be ‘modern’?! OSFs are also rarely seen in magazines, and definitely not newspapers. And not to mention cheap novels (they probably just don’t know better/couldn’t be bothered).

> How about ‘short’ lining numerals?

I love ‘em. The only kind of lining numerals that really work in text (unless your caps are abnormally short).

And for old-style numerals, unless your x-height is huge, I think the “hybrid” kind are much better than the conventional kind.

> How about lining old-style figures?

I think you mean “fixed-width” here, not “lining”.

> Massimo Vignelli

Yeah, that guy probably uses Helvetica too…

hhp

> How about lining old-style figures?

> I think you mean “fixed-width” here, not “lining”.

Sorry about my terminology. I’m confused… by lining I meant lining vertically, i.e. monospaced. So the lining refers to the height, not the width?!

I’ve only seen “lining numerals” to mean where the numbers are the same height. Usually this means the same height of the caps as well, but not always: there are short lining numerals (pioneered by Austin/Bell), and I think they generally work better. Lining numerals are often fixed-width.

The “opposite” of lining numerals are old-style numerals (which are called all kinds of funny things, like “up-and-down numerals”), and they generally behave like lc letters, but not always: there’s what’s called “hybrid” numerals, which have larger-than-x=height bodies, but also feature extenders. The foremost practitioner of this style is Luc[as] de Groot, although happily this style -which I consider the ideal for text- is getting quickly more popular. There are actually tentative traces of this in some ATF fonts (like Garamond), but Luc[as] was the first to really flourish the hybrid style, as far as I’ve found.

Old-style numerals are rarely fixed-width, even though structurally they actually fit that mold more easily!

hhp

I love Old Style Figures too. But I find that sans serif fonts with OSF are much less common than the serif ones that come with OSF.

Can someone list down all the sans serif fonts with OSF? Please? I’ll start…

LuxSans
TheSans
AngieSans
ScalaSans
Myriad Pro (?) but no small caps

For stationery, I feel that lining figures shout at you, while OSF look slightly tiny. Has anyone ever used lining figures but reduced the size a notch or so? Does it work?

> Has anyone ever used lining figures but reduced the size a notch or so? Does it work?

I think that if you were do do this, depending on what a notch is, you will start to see weight and color changes that might not be ideal.

It would better in this case, to use what Keith and Hrant have referred to so far as “ ‘short’ lining numerals.” If I am not mistaken, I would also refer to them as an equivalent of a small caps version of lining figures. These figures would be designed to match the weights and color of the minuscule romans, for example, that it is meant to be paried with.

The only family that I could find, on the fly, that had such characters was ( I’ll be shot for this. )
Mrs Eaves.

I’m sure there are others, but I don’t have the time to look around.

Well, there’re a few, tho’ you’re right about them being a bit uncommon (the curse of the grotesque parentage, I guess) but nowadays I’d think that about a third of the sans have OsF.

So let’s see: Akzidenz-Grotesk Light OsF Legacy Sans DTL Argo, DTL Documenta Sans, &c (DTL) Le Monde Sans. Parisine, &c (Porchez) Eureka, Meta, Fago, Quadraat Sans, &c (Fontfont) Tarzana, Solex, &c (Emigre) Foundry Sans, Foundry Form Sans

And (correct me if I’m mistaken) I think that someone (Berthold?) was revising Univers and adding text figures.

Sean, by ‘short numerals’ I mean numerals that are slightly shorter than the caps, but still taller than small caps or lowercase. Check out Miller and Bell. They also have extenders, but shorter than your usual old-style figures.

And (correct me if I’m mistaken) I think that someone (Berthold?) was > revising Univers and adding text figures.

No way! It’d look stupid :-P Same for Akzidenz Grotesk.

Actually, it might be a great practical idea to match the heights of smallcaps and short lining numerals!

BTW, the Bell/Miller numerals are kinda funky in their extenderness.

hhp

> I think that if you were do do this, depending on what a notch is, you will start to see weight and color changes that might not be ideal.

It’s a tricky situation. You have to try to increase it so that you see the change in height without the weight gain and change in colour. So sometimes you end up changing it so little that it seems to make no difference.

> nowadays I’d think that about a third of the sans have OsF.

Do you mean that a third of those released nowadays? Because out of all the sans(es) that are available now, I think I can only find 1/10 or less with OSF.

I’m waiting to see if the list grows.

>I’m waiting to see if the list grows.

I have added Preface, with tabular, old-style figures as standard, in six weights, Roman and Italic.

It’s far easier to design an even-colored set of tabular figures, if one does them old-style — there’s more leeway to make a wide “1” that doesn’t look anomalous, and a “0” that doesn’t end up being too condensed (and with excessively narrow sidebearings) as in lining figures.

Tabular lining figures have terribly uneven color and fit in things like area codes, eg loose (416) and tight (905).

holy cow people. i was gone a few days, and am amazed at the amount of banter occuring here. i’ll have to go back up and actually read the posts, but i wanted to actually post what i’m working on. hopefully this will clarify things. i do appreciate the amount of detailed insights and opinions i’m offered here. once again, that’s the great thing about typophile…


this is the solution i’m leaning towards. i think it works well, especially since the info is relatively minimal. i agree with the prior thought that this adds a bit of uniqueness to the card, given the ubiquity of lining figures. but i’m always up for opinions…

Business cards are considered stationary?

I always thought stationary was like good writing paper with maybe your name or a monogramme on it or something.

Either way, that’s nice. Good clean layout, easy to read, great use of space. The symbol reminds me a lot of the venn diagramme to show how RGB colours interact with each other, but I non artistic people mightn’t think about it.

chris—
i would consider b.cards stationery in that they’re part of a correspondence system. while a letterhead and envelope are more specifically “stationery” in the generalized sense of the term, every corporate system i’ve designed included at least the letterhead, envelope and business card. i guess in this case it doesn’t really matter what you call it; it’s still gotta be designed. thanks for the comments, by the way.

Hey Tyler — I think the OSF works nice with the design you chose, it adds a nice more personal touch. Also, the LFs of Scala aren’t too pretty. The only criticism is the usage of the Lefthand. I really don’t dig fake Handscript for Identity Systems. Either you’re opting for something personal — then you can use a real handscript-lettering — or you don’t Digital mass-marketed

I think in this case, the OSFs look fine.

But I also think that the “f” is an example of why OSFs sometimes just don’t work on business cards. That “f ” ruins it for me a bit. It stands way up there and my attention is brought to it rather than the numbers that you are trying to highlight.

Got to work now. Bye.

hd—
thanks for all the input. while i understand and agree with your comments on lefthand, unfortunately, the logo is already in use. i’m not much of a hand letterer and didn’t really think of the options you mentioned. i guess the computer got the best of me there—it often provides a quick and easy solution. also i suppose i’m still enamored with lefthand and rarely use scripts at all, so it seemed like a good choice for adding a personal touch to the mark.

the “community church” type is scala. i’m trying to keep the logo a unique element, but still have the type relate on a basic structural level (scala/scala sans). i can see where having three faces may be a bit much, but i’ve applied the logo and scala sans very consistently across all three pieces.

the colored circles are not hand drawn (illustrator blobs), but are organic in nature, to contrast with the perfection of the black circles. it’s meant to convey our wavering nature as humans versus the perfection of God.

sean—sorry about the offensive “f”. i’m not sure what to do there. i guess i could spell out “phone” and “fax”. but i’m more a fan of minimal elements, so i can live with the “f” as opposed to taking up more space with the whole word. it’s all about the give and take…

okay, you guys have compelled me to noodle more. here are three variants of the original. now i’m all indecisive. thanks : P

I’d take Version a) or b), although I like a) a bit better.

The reasoning behind the circles is very very nice, in my opinion. I can see the quick and easy way that FFLefthand came over you … but it doesn’t add a personal touch, but rather fakes the illusion of personality in an industrial fashion… that is kinda the opposite of what you want to express, thus my comment. Maybe it is still possible to at least work a bit on the individual letterforms and add a tuch of inividuality without compromising the already established version too much…?

I don’t think the f is too much of a problem. Maybe it helps to make the p and f bold, to better differntiate them from the numbers? Or you use Small Caps for these two letters, so they make an ideal fit with the numerals and the overall design should look quite nice as well with the added SC.

One more thing — I’m not suire how this is done in the US but in Europe we tend to divide off the phonenumbers into little packages, like this:

0201 849 61 64
(with less space between the numbers, of course)

Isn’t that done overseas? Because apart from the dots I don’t see any kind of this and I wondered if it would even make sense, as there are never more than four digits in a sub-section. Just trying to learn something here…

Aaaand, when I’m already playing 20-stupid-questions-for-a-buck… Just to satisfy my curiosity: what is the meaning of the x123? Just a placeholder … or does that actually mean something?

“Heartland”: just change one of the “a”s.

hhp

hrant—
good idea on the dual “a”s.
hd—
i’ll try the small caps idea. on the phone numbers, the divisions are pretty set at 3-3-4 for logistical reasons, but the way to break them up visually is personal choice. non-designers typically write it (555) 555-5555. my european teachers introduced me to 555.555.5555, but i’d say it’s somewhat open in how to treat it.
the x123 means the person can be reached at phone extension 123. when you dial the main number and get the automated phone system, just dial 123 and you reach that person. isn’t technology amazing?

What about ext123 instead of just x?

> I’m waiting to see if the list grows.

Optima Nova also has Old Style numerals.

I like the first one best. But I agree with HD that you should bold the p and f.

A little later, I’m gonna try and consolidate the links of all the sans serifs with OSF. So please post more sans serifs with OSFs.

>it’s all about the give and take…
I totally agree — and in this case, I think it is worth the compromise.

>“Heartland”: just change one of the “a”s.
A great suggestion that will add just the right amount of character without too much effort. I like this idea. Good one.

>Maybe it helps to make the p and f bold, to better differentiate them from the numbers?

I think that would only highlight the issue even more. The problem, to me, is that the ‘p’ matches too much and the ‘f’ does not match enough. I personally try to avoid bold whenever I can and try to seek alternate solutions.

>Or you use Small Caps for these two letters

Now, this might just be the number and is a great excuse not to bold. I am speculating here, I have not tried it, but I’ll bet that small caps will be different enough and at the same time not match enough to work just right. Give and take. Try it. I’ll bet it will work.

Oh, and I totally agree with Keith that the extension number is way out place there. I can not stress enough how much you should move that. I say totally leave it off if you can get away with it. If you absolutly need it, move it. It needs to be by the phone number.

I like the sans version. It contrasts well with the rest of the card. I do like it. Good night, from the desert.

Sean Michael

But stationery isn’t supposed to be a “lively read”, it is supposed to be informative. Within a setting of paragraphs it makes sense to do the OsF figures, but within a 2-3 line setting, especially when it isn’t even a sentence, but bits of information.

What do you mean by OsF are anything but Old-style? That is exactly what OSF stands for.

Ok. I have to agree with you about the small caps usage. If you do use small caps, then you should probably use the OsF because the do fall in line beside the small caps much better than to the lining. Thank you for clarifying that. However, I do still standby my statement of stationery being design more of the information variety. Too much OsF, IMO, is a bad thing in a stationery system.

Tyler, I don’t think that’s an appropriate place for the extension number. It should stick to the phone number. Craig MacElvain, Senior Pastor, x123?! Visually I’m grouping these three bits of information together. Just a thought…