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mini printed type
Posted by elastik in
26 Jul 2005 — 3:02pm
26 Jul 2005 — 3:02pm
neither having a typometer nor a printer with me at the moment,
i am wondering if anyone could tell me the minimal legible size for printed
serif fonts and sansserif fonts. i know that it really depends on the typeface,
and it is extremely relative, but i need to put copyright (all rights reserved ......)
info on a CD design (onto the actual CD - using AG Book Rounded, either Regular or Medium) and want
it to be tiny but still legible..... is 2 points too small? maybe 3 points?
thx!!
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26 Jul 2005 — 3:47pm
i would say both are too small, especially given your typeface choice. i'd say minimum is 4 or even 5 pts.
26 Jul 2005 — 3:59pm
http://www.tdc.org/news/2005Results/Minuscule.html
hhp
26 Jul 2005 — 4:19pm
The smallest I've ever printed on a cd face has been 6 pt Franklin Gothic. I think the limit is probably around 5 pt, I would be really nervous about going any smaller than that. From my experience, this is small enough if you put the copyright information around the outside rim.
A serif font would need to be printed a little bigger because the thins tend to fill in. If you're knocking the text out it also needs to be bigger because of the ink spread.
27 Jul 2005 — 4:27am
Minuscule. It's still legible in 3pt size due to the designer's awareness on inkspread and legibility issues. I've seen printed samples, i.e. Thomas Huot-Marchand has put together all 30-something pages of "Physiologie de la lecture et de l'ecriture" by Emile Javal on one DIN A4 sheet.
Minuscule is still being fine tuned afaik. It will be available "at the end of summer" at http://www.256tm.com/
A sample of the 2pt "Minuscule deux" (or was that the 3pt? correct me if I am wrong) can be found here.
27 Jul 2005 — 6:13am
I have a cd on my desk that has 5pt Helvetica Roman reversed out of black which is just readable but it is not very reader-friendly and my copy of Illustrator 9 has what looks like 4pt in a condensed sans which is surprisingly good. I suppose the primary questions are how many colours you are printing, what print process you are using and what surface the cd has in the first place.
Tim
27 Jul 2005 — 7:52am
wow! that miniscule is wild! i'd be interested to see it in actual application.
27 Jul 2005 — 8:12am
Ok so what you are all proving to me is that I need to get my eyes checked. :^P
Chris Burke's Celeste Small Text does work very well quite small.
27 Jul 2005 — 8:47am
For AG Buch Rounded, don't go below 4 pt, all caps.
And use the Medium, not the Regular.
27 Jul 2005 — 12:44pm
Stephan:
1) "Physiologie de la lecture et de l'ecriture" is about 300 pages.
2) Just to be clear: that sample on my site is by Javal, not Thomas.
BTW, I feel that below of certain point size it's better to use all-caps (for a "conventional" typeface).
hhp
27 Jul 2005 — 1:49pm
As far as i know, CD's are still printed using screen-printing processes, which in my past experience means relatively low resolution and lots of choking and bleeding. I would suggest
converting the final type to paths and make mods to compensate, ie. ink traps and opening the counters a bit.
27 Jul 2005 — 2:30pm
I'm sorry but you have a legal problem. If you set the copyright information below a certain point size then its considered deception and illeagal. Consult your companies attorney.
27 Jul 2005 — 2:35pm
Hmmm. What is the legal definition of point size? Sheesh.
hhp
27 Jul 2005 — 3:48pm
hrant you can't decive the public, there are minimum sizes to present to the end user. Yes there are leagal minumum point sizes. I'm sure you can understand this as an issue.
27 Jul 2005 — 7:43pm
> there are leagal minumum point sizes.
I'm not saying there aren't. But they can only mean something if "point size" is defined. Is the "point size" that number you choose in an application? Because you must understand that that has no real bearing on the actual size of the text that comes out... That's the problem I was alluding to.
hhp