Zach,

You might consider Jim Parkinson's Azuza:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/parkinson/azuza/

Or Gerard Unger's Swift:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/swift/

Or the granddaddy of all newspaper types,
Frank Hinman's sadly underused Plantin:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/plantin/


Other newspaper fonts that might look nice
with Gotham's geometry include:

Matthew Carter's Olympian:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/olympian/

Chauncey H. Griffith's Excelsior:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/excelsior/

Chauncey H. Griffith's Corona:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/corona/

Robin Nicholas' Nimrod:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/agfa/nimrod/

And

Apologies

Case in point concerning the issue with allowing post edits: if David hadn't posted, I would have kept waiting for Zach to re-launch his thread, since he had said "Ignore this one."

Anyway...
I don't think Charter is that bland. And Swift is generally a great choice. I'd go on, but:

Questions: what's the newspaper about, and what's its main targe demographic?

hhp

David,
Wow, Lexon is very interesting... but out there. I'm not sure I have the cajones to pull it off. Another consideration I forgot to mention here is that the flag will most likely be in Modern No. 20, like this (though better kerned):



I like this for both artistic and practical reasons, but if it makes everyone go "ugh" I may be persuaded to do something else.

But I'm wondering whether Lexon would be a good choice next to Gotham *and* the above; perhaps three very distinctive faces is too much, and a more neutral face like Charter or Swift would be better. Or for all I know it could be brilliant. What do you think?

Hrant,

see - "Help for a new typophile on a newspaper redesign" (8-01-03)


David Hamuel

BTW, if I used Swift, is there any difference between the Elsner+Flake and the Linotype versions? Those two show up on myfonts.com, wheras Swift 2.0 on Unger's own site seems too expensive for us.

David, now I'm a bit confused... :-/

--

I've heard Swift2 is only marginally better than the original.

hhp

Hrant,

Zach posted something about his paper (general discussions - thread "help for...redesign")


David Hamuel

Why not trying the new Whitman from Font Bureau ?
http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/font_frames.tpl?fontname=Whitman or at the same place the beautiful family Poynter OS Display ?
http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/font_frames.tpl?cart=10614568052255729&fontname=PoynterOSDisplay

Greetings,

Philippe

The wonderful Whitman is a book face; its x-height is too small for news setting.
Poynter is generally a superb choice, but very pricey.

hhp

>The wonderful Whitman is a book face; its x-height
is too small for news setting.

I have to agree. Whitman would not be well suited for
news. Given some of its roots in Scotch forms, however,
I have wondered if it couldn't be reconfigured for
newspaper work. I have sketches somewhere that I
started a while back to adapt the proportions to news --
much taller x-height and shorter extenders, narrower
overall, etc.

But that is on a back burner and may never come to
any fruition.

I'm personally a great admirer of both Charter and
Swift. Understatement and neutrality are generally
good qualities in a news face. These two might not
work in commercial newspaper circumstances, but I
think they might serve well in a school paper.

-- Kent.

> narrower overall

Kent, I've come to the -admittedly counterintuitive, and somewhat tentative- conclusion that narrowness is an illusional virtue in a news face. When you take into account the frequent linebreaks in news setting (and possible a negative effect in apparent size), it turns out that it might in fact backfire*. So the choice of width in a news face has more to do with the atmosphere you want to convey than economy. I'm talking about body here, not headings, where horizontal economy is of obvious benefit.

* Does this jive with what the FB experts have told you?

Also, when you pull in the extenders you automatically create a perception of width. When I was deriving Patria from Harrier, I ended up with a much more squat and masculine design than I expected, or even originally wanted. I'm lucky I ended up liking it like that! :-)

In the case of Whitman, it depends on the atmosphere you want to convey. If you want it wide/homey (which to me fits well) rather than narrow/elegant, chances are just pulling in the extenders is enough.

hhp

Zach, Worldwide fits your bill.

If you'd like to try it out in a press test versus some other faces, I'd be happy to send you a "for test purposes only" copy of the Regular font.

Woldwide indeed seems like a great choice, as long as the "stateliness" conveyed by its narrowness fits with the character of Zach's paper.

But really, we need to at least know what point size is going to be used. Like if it's around 9-10, that would favor Worldwide more.

hhp

>the "stateliness" conveyed by its narrowness

Actually, Worldwide might be a bit too condensed to work with Gotham, which is quite squat and wide looking. However, it could work with Gotham Condensed. But really, it's tough to know till you actually start playing around. There are so many typographic parameters that a designer can fiddle with these days in news design -- a huge difference from the rigid restrictions of the pre-digital era.

A few years ago, North American web presses went narrower, causing all kinds of design problems for news designers, who generally responded by going to narrower faces. So there is definitely a "semi-condensed" look to the genre -- but of course we don't know where Zach is is heading in relation to the trend.

On Worldwide: I'm not a huge fan of the Century look. And OSFs would be nice... But more importantly, as far as stateliness goes, I think that it may not be the right choice for our paper, as it will be fairly populist.

I was going to use both Gotham and Gotham condensed.

As much as I hate to not take up the challenge when someone says "If you're a bit more daring...", I don't think I'm daring enough to try Lexon. And Swift... well, I prefer a softer-edged look. So maybe I should just stick with Charter. It *has* been growing on me since I called it bland.

>but of course we don't know where Zach is is heading in relation to the trend.

Nor does Zach Nor does he know what a "web press" is... it seems like an oxymoron.

Zach -- there are lots of Newspaper Designer sites
out there, but for general newspaper/journalism stuff,
you can't beat

www.poynter.org/

do a search for "typography" or "design"


also,

www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45

the juiciest stuff from Jim Romensko

Soft and populist, now we're getting somewhere.
Question: do you think something like the new LA Times body face is too homey for you?

--

Press narrowing:
http://www.snd.org/graphics/narroweb.pdf

But I reiterate that making fonts narrower is an illusional compensation.

hhp

>Soft and populist, now we're getting somewhere.
>Question: do you think something like the new
>LA Times body face is too homey for you?

I must confess I haven't seen it... I haven't found a bookstore that carries more than the basic Boston/NY papers plus some international ones. And a few minutes searching the internet yielded no high-res images.

Sorry, I had meant to answer you about the demographic and viewpoint of the paper earlier but forgot. Gordon is a private, religious, liberal-arts college -- officially "evangelical", which is a kind of catch-all term for conservative Protestants. The student body however is more diverse than that, with both very liberal and very conservative Christians, and many non-Christians as well, (though that's rarely talked about).

So handling the demographic is tricky: wheras a national newspaper can carve out its niche in the political spectrum, we probably have a more complex range of readers to serve. The task would be easy if a garden variety, conservative evangelical Protestant had gotten the editorship: you just select and deliver the news from that point of view, and basically preserve the Gordon status quo. But I'm more of a progressive pseudo-Christian (a Quaker to be precise), so I have to think really hard about how to balance my views with what the Gordon community would prefer to hear. For example, we will probably publicize the nasty things done by some the companies Gordon is invested in, though it will probably make many people upset.

And though we will be pretty leftist, I don't want us to be either shrill (trying to find common ground whenever possible) or alarmist (talking about important social issues, sure, but not trying to put everyone in a perpetual state of moral outrage). So a simple and gentle typeface might reflect that well.

> I haven't seen it

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/
(Pure gold reference, thanks to Andy Crewdson.)

The list of available papers changes daily, so check back if the one you're looking for is missing.

> .... it will probably make many people upset.

Good, good.

--

I think if you find a somewhat squat face with no frills, you'll be set. But since it's a college paper, you'd like something with a youthful edge too... So I'm starting to think Charter is [almost] perfect.

hhp

Pure gold is right! I'm surprised the papers allow someone to do that.

I did find it a bit too homey... chummy even. What is it?

Thanks so much for the help (and links) everyone.

Zach

> I'm surprised the papers allow someone to do that.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the papers submit the files themselves! Note that PDFs are available... You'd need a really evasive mole in the publishing department of each newspaper... :-/

The new (well, no longer so new) LA Times body face was part of a full-scale overhaul, with FontBureau providing the various new fonts (except for those glorious section caps, done by Carter). Most people (who have an opinion) seem to think it's too provincial.

hhp