Font Comparison – Free / open source – Legibility, Professionalism, Resume

Introduction

Fonts have to perform in a variety of settings, in particular on computers (pdf and web) and in printed documents. Are there open source alternatives to proprietary fonts? Short answer: Yes!

Two kinds: Serif and Sans Serif

Serif fonts have squiggly things on the letters, and sans serif do not (sans means “without). That’s the basic difference. The standard Serif font is Times New Roman and the standard Sans Serif font is Arial (with its younger sibling Helvetica). (For the true typographic geeks, there is a eature-length film on Helvetica and global design issues.)

Comparing Serif Fonts

The Serif oldie is Times New Roman. The new one from Microsoft is Cambria. (For the Serif fonts, Georgia was inadvertantly left out. It can be considered in the place of Verdana but for Serif fonts.) Liberation, Droid, and Libertine are three open source offerings. Droid was designed for the Google AnDroid platform.

I have found good reaction to the use of Cambria. It is legible, and recognizable as a serif font, yet has enough of a difference to evoke an aesthetic response. I find it simple yet elegant.

Open Source Serif Fonts

How do these three open source options compare? Liberation has less spacing between the letters. At first this might appear a disadvantage, but we read in chunks of words and phrases, not individual letters. The same is with Droid, which when one shrinks down the size of the font more and more, retains much greater legibility. Overall, Droid is more narrow, Liberation taller than Cambria which becomes squat, but retains legibility.

Linux Libertine

Linux Libertine is an excellent comparison font at 6-8 point size. Libertine retains a sense of 19th century elegance, which it is meant to. The Capital Q and W and lowercase w and the upward slanting tail on the lowercase u and the handles on either side of the capital T are all interesting. Because of the 19th century old school/steampunk sensibility, this is a great font for logos and taglines.

Droid Serif

I find the Liberation font to have some problems with the u and m. When they get small, legibility is hampered. As such, the Droid Serif becomes my choice for reading text, including the Resume, if Serif is chosen (which signals more traditional and conservative sensibility as opposed to sans serif which is more modern and up-to-date).

Comparing Sans Serif Fonts

Verdana has been a solid update of Arial and great for web and print work. It is a safe font to use in many situations, though it is becoming a bit dated. Calibri is the Microsoft replacement to Arial. Calibri has better spacing than Verdana, and is therefore more legible and a bigger font when provided the same number of linear inches. This makes it a more narrow font. Verdana has a more square feel and uniform spacing per character.

Liberation Sans

Unfortunately Liberation Sans does not fare well. The y appears to be too short compared with the z. The a is a bit out of place. And when comparing the letters o w and n in brown, the w appears to crowd the n but not give too much space to the o.

Droid Sans

Droid comes out very strong against all other options. It has an interesting letter c and a. It doesn’t have as optimal a spacing as calibri but compares favorably with Verdana. It is a bit more narrow and taller.

Bottom Line

I prefer Droid Sans, Droid Serif, and Linux Libertine to compare favorably with Microsoft’s Cambria and Calibri. Open Source offerings rise to the challenges and meet the typographic needs of today.

P.S., Don’t forget to embed the fonts in any PDFs you create. For Windows users, the free CutePDF application adds a nice PDF printer driver to create great PDFs.

Font Comparison Free / open source Legibility, Professionalism, Resume
Font Comparison, originally uploaded by jeffmcneill.

Note: this comparison is with different font sizes, chosen to achieve a similar line length in Sentence case.

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February 20, 2009 • Tags: , , • Posted in: Design

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