Til fordel for Sassoon: http://fontsinuse.com/the-basement-at-londons-science-museum/

Comenia Serif looks very good. Although, the f leaves me a little bit wondering, why is the crossbar thinner than the serif?? For me this is no logic.
What should be peculiar about the æ?

Another typeface with a relaxed feel (similar to Comenia) is Novel, Sans and Serif.

As for the much debated single-storey a and g, those are certainly not the guilty parts if typography for youngsters turns bad. Futura has a single-storey a and a single-storey g and no one complains about that.
I have made “infant” variant fonts of Andron with this alternate glyphs because there is some request for it. As for legibility, I’d say its the same as with the usual glyphs, even for children.

IMO Comenia is too sophisticated.
This is a result of its broad-nibbed chirographic forms, which the readers will not understand.
For instance, why is there no serif at the top left of “a” or on the right leg of “k”?
And what about all the f ligatures?
The virtue of Century Schoolbook was that it was a simplified, or naive, almost pop-art version of the typical modern text face of its era, and had an easy to understand thematic serif structure.

Oh hey, I almost thought you missed the opportunity to promote your fonts again, Andreas. Glad you added in last paragraph for good measure.

Unfortunately overused, but I'd consider both Dolly and Sauna from Underware. The former leaning more towards book typography, the latter I could easily see as a text face for short paragraphs at around 20 points and it also has plenty of punch for titling work. Dolly's Bold likewise -- it's begging to be used for a childrens book.

SIL has developed such a font (Andika), though for a number of reasons, you may not want to use it -- it is a sans, and currently has only a roman.

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=andika

Plantin is worthy of consideration.

And if, for any reason, you want an open source serif font, I find Charis quite easy to read. Essentially, it is a Matthew Carter design.

Edit:

I'd think Nick Shinn's *Sense* would also work, if you want a sans.

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/shinn/sense/

What Nick said.
"Fantastically elegant"? Kids think farting is cool.

Concerning the monocular "a"/"g", the two questions are:
What's the intent, learning to read, or reading to learn?
And at what age does your school system want the children
to learn the binocular forms? For example if you're setting
text for a book about geography for very young kids, you
should use the mono forms. In any case, don't use Futura as
a reference - it's a caricature of a font. (Although I'm not a
little kid, I enjoy calling it Fartura. :-)

BTW, in Comenia the "e" in the aesc is too much wider than the "a".
This is better:

hhp

@oysteinvidnes - jeg har hørt ei sån hund, naboas Lexy.

@charles_e - Charis is, IIRC, descended from the Charter that Bitstream let loose into the wild.

@charles_e - Charis is, IIRC, descended from the Charter that Bitstream let loose into the wild.

Indeed it is. And the "descended" doesn't include modifying basic character shapes, just a slight increase in size (by scaling only), and adding a lot of new characters.

BTW, Charter was designed by Matthew Carter.

Thanks for all the great comments! I see I went a bit over board about Comenia. It happens sometimes.

@Nick: I see your points. But using the f-ligatures in the sample was a fault on my part. The typeface works very nicely without them.

@Andreas Stötzner: Novel Serif and Sans are awesome. So far I have only played with the demo version, but it's certainly something I will consider for other projects. The roman is indeed very similar to Comenia. The italic versions might have a bit too much character. I also quite like Andron, but haven't had time to try it extensively yet. Demo versions are great, the only way to really try out a font before buying.

@Frode Frank: I considered Dolly, it's a favorite of mine, but the italic isn't straightforward enough, and the font lacks lining figures, as far as I can tell. About Sauna: Its charm doesn't quite work on me, I think. To me it just looks kind of square and geometric (without actually being either). Would maybe work for shorter texts set large.

@Hrant: It's only on the first level (out of four) that we consider using the monocular a and g. To be clear, the only reason I mentioned Futura was the fact that some easy reader books use fonts like that. I could say: we're not aiming for cool (that's the illustrator's job), but for warm.

@charles_e @Té Rowan: Charter/Charis is another favorite, and we we almost picked it. But so far we're still with the rather more rounded shapes in Comenia.

Which isn't to say that I'm ignoring all the good advice from these forums. For the beginner's books we're still trying to figure it out. One alternative is to pick something like Mantika informal

About that æ: I made a little comparison with some of the other fonts that either were or could have been in consideration, and to my eyes Comenia is the more elegant, though it's pretty meaningless to look at this one glyph in isolation.

Of those, I only like the Garamond (which for me is actually rare).
It needs to be one thing, and balanced.

hhp

Øystein: Did I just say hi to you at the office?

The question of the simpler versus more complicated forms for a and g is a complicated one that I have spent some serious time on. In short:

- teachers and book designers/producers seem to mostly prefer the simpler forms for theoretical reasons with no support from actual science.
- young readers in first and second grade prefer the more complex forms (according to research by Sue Walker)
- cognitive psychology theory suggests that the more complex forms are also more clearly distinctive and hence should be easier to learn and easier to distinguish (my own analysis, supported by Kevin Larson)

The idea that we *must* use the simpler forms for written works aimed at beginning readers assumes in part that they can and will be shielded from the more complicated forms. I believe this argument is obviously nonsense. It would require control not only of all lettering in the schools, but also of the home environment and everywhere the children go. They are exposed to the more complicated forms, and trying to avoid teaching them is just kind of silly, IMO.

Cheers,

T

@frode frank: Wow, yes, indeed! Eg kopla ikkje før no.

@Thomas Phinney: Thanks a lot! This matches my intuitive thoughts on the matter. But if I were to insist on using the complicated forms, I would need even stronger supportive arguments, so any pointers or references to articles/reports would be appreciated.

@hrant: Your eyes are obviously more trained than mine, and looking again I agree more. In the first one the e is carrying the a, strapped on as a backpack. Though I still like that vertical stroke.

Well, you have the support that the readers prefer it, and that cognitive psych theory seems to support it. They have... tradition.

Cheers,

T

This is all rather theoretical.
In practice, you need to know what your client’s philosophy is.

I once designed an early reading typeface, and the directives I received seemed to be a compromise between what they thought was logical for their readers, and what they thought looked good. In other words, theory is all very well, but theory be damned if it doesn’t create the right impression to the fluently-reading adults who are the book-buyers.

This is similar to the postmodern take on modernism: functionalism was as much about looking functional and conforming to functionalist theroy, as being functional in performance.