Earlier this week I ran a poll here to discover which type group was more favored for newspaper headlines. The results?
- Serif: 57%
- Sans serif: 29%
- Other: 14%
You know you are a designer if the thought of playing around with different typefaces makes you lick your lips with anticipation. Me? As a newspaper designer, I particularly love headline typefaces, and the Choosing of the Heads is the most fun I have while leading a redesign.
I mean, what’s not to like? First, the big serif vs. sans serif debate, with loads of wonderful faces to choose from. That choice probably depends somewhat on the publisher’s personal taste (hey, she’s writing the check) and the personality of the newspaper in its own competitive marketplace.
Even though I prefer serif faces to sans serif on print editions, and vice versa on news web sites, it doesn’t really matter. Once you settle on the basic group, the fun begins. Now you get to play with various typeface options, you can fiddle with size and linespacing to best match the baseline grid you set up, and you get to adjust set width and tracking.
Before I go any further into my Happy Space, I need to say how important it is to settle on your body type before you select your heads.
This is because your body type takes up the majority of the newshole and it is, in essence, long, vertical columns of a shade of gray, depending on the face and your settings. Some typefaces give a rather light gray to the body type and some a darker gray. You need to take this “type color” into consideration when selecting your headlines so you have the appropriate contrast between the two.
A light body type calls for a medium weight: you want your heads to carry more visual weight than your body copy, but you don’t want to overwhelm it. If you have a medium-dark gray body type, you are going to have to go a little stronger on your headline typeface.
Serif faces, to my eye, tend to have more evocative personalities than do sans serif faces, which can often me strong, but bland and uninteresting. It’s probably because of the serifs and the contrast between thick and thin that is usually found lacking in sans serif faces.
Of course, the obvious solution to the dilemma is to use both. Use a bold sans serif for your hard-hitting lead news story and a serif for the other stories on your section fronts. I would do this mainly on section fronts, by the way, not inside.
Once you have made your choice, I would almost guarantee that you will improve the heads by setting a negative tracking number, thus tightening the head a bit. I also recommend that you condense the typeface a bit as well, not to make it a condensed face, but just to make the presentation a little more dense. Use a condensed face that was drawn that way if that’s the look you need.
That’s it. Now, you’ve given the copyeditors the notes, it’s up to them to make the headlines sing.
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