With such a vast array of fonts, it can be an agonizing experience to choose the right one. If your looking to take some of the grief out of the design process, here are some tips on fonts that will make your printed materials more dynamic:

Choosing a Typestyle:
Serif: Typestyles with short, angled lines at the ends of each letter's strokes. The major varieties include: Caston, Garamond, Bodini, Tiffany, Times and Baskerville.

Sans Serif: Means literally "without serifs," such as Helvetica, Eurostyle, and Avante Garde.

Display: This is the miscellaneous typeface category. Display faces can have serifs like Algerian and Merced, and can be sans serif as well, like Bremen and Dom Diagonal. By definition, they are too elaborate for text, but are excellent tone-setters and attention-getters at large sizes. They range from script faces such as Freestyle and Flemish to wacky advertising faces such as Harlow and Pipeline.

Your font choice depends upon the needs of your project and its intended audience. Remember, that each typeface has a personality, and the one you choose should be appropriate to your target audience.

Try these rules of thumb:
If the information is more important than the presentation, use a single type family, ideally an appropriate Serif Style (most likely a typeface such as Bookman or Century).

If the design and information are equally important, use complementary Serif and Sans Serif Styles, such as the Serif Palatino and Sans Serif Future are similar. Times and Helvetica always work together. Using a Serif with a complementary display face can work.

If the design is more important than the information, try combining Serif and Sans Serif faces with a display type used for accents such as drop caps or pullquotes.

Use a Serif face for body copy; Use a Sans Serif for headlines.

 

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