[Tex/LaTex] Style question: serif or sans fonts in figure and chart text

best practicesdiagramsfontssans-seriftypography

Question for you design-y types:

I like to use a serif font for all my text (title, headings, body). What I'd like to know is whether you think that I should go with a serif or sans serif for text in my charts (bar labels, axis labels, chart titles, etc) and figures (flowchart node and edge labels, etc).

On the one hand, serif lends a nice continuity to the feel of the document, but on the other I think sans serifs are more legible with small fonts.

I'm torn on the matter. Thoughts?

Best Answer

Here my personal experience writing my thesis: Using one (serif) font in the text, pictures and charts seems to be the most elegant choice. However, using sans serif in diagrams, plots, figures, ... looks more technical and can be better legible. (all as you already mentioned)

I actually wanted to make the text of the captions of the figures and tables to be easily distinguishable from the main text. So I used a sans serif font for all tables and figures including their captions with one step smaller font size (\small). I made sure that all sans serif elements have the same font size. I also adjusted the leading to give similar blackness levels on the paper for the serif main text and the sans serif captions. Robert Bringhurst used a similar approach in his typography book.

One possible issue: If the sans serif font has less font features (e.g. small caps) then the serif font, one has to find a compromise...

Even if you can only adjust the figure's font, the technical, more clear appearance seems preferable to me.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] When to use serif and when to use sans serif font family

a good and detailed answer can be found also here - although it's talking about web design, I think these are good guide lines also for printed documents: http://webdesign.about.com/od/fonts/a/aa080204.htm

[Tex/LaTex] Which sans serif and monospace fonts suit Century Schoolbook

Ironic that you find Century Schoolbook suitable for online documentation, as it was developed nearly 100 years ago for school textbooks!

While googling I found esperfonto, which has a search box to help pair fonts.

They suggest Arial, Helvetica, or Frutiger Humanist 777 for sans fonts. They don't suggest monospace pairs, though.

The Frutiger family is not free. I tried Century Schoolbook, Helvetica, and Courier, and it seems to look pretty good.

Here is a sample document (requires xelatex) to test your selections:

\documentclass{article}
\title{Font Test}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Century Schoolbook}
\setsansfont{Helvetica}
\setmonofont{Courier}
\usepackage{sectsty}
\allsectionsfont{\sffamily}
\begin{document}
\maketitle

This article uses the \textsf{blindtext} package to typeset dummy text.  The preamble is:

\begin{verbatim}
\documentclass{article}
\title{Font Test}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Century Schoolbook}
\setsansfont{Arial}
\usepackage{sectsty}
\setmonofont{Courier}
\allsectionsfont{\sffamily}
\end{verbatim}
\blinddocument
\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] When to use serif and when to use sans serif font family

[Tex/LaTex] Which sans serif and monospace fonts suit Century Schoolbook

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