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Get With the Times, New Roman!

Get With the Times, New Roman!

By Martin Clare of Phantom Theatre Services

When it comes to flyer design, font choice is maybe the biggest make-or-break design decision you can make. If you’ve ever seen a flyer somebody has designed for a school fête using every conceivable font and Word Art style under the sun, you’ll know just how messy it can look.

Here are my top five tips for font usage:

  • As a general rule of thumb, only ever use two fonts. A stand-out font for the title of the production, and a plain font for everything else.
  • A rare exception to this rule is if the author has enough gravitas to have their name before the title of the play (eg: William Shakespeare’s…). A good calligraphic font works well here.
  • Aside from the title font, stick to a plain and contemporary sans serif font that works well at small sizes.
  • To place emphasis where needed, use a font with variations. For example, if you use Arial as your main font, you could put less relevant information like credits in Arial Narrow, and prominent information like the dates and ticket-line number in Arial Black.
  • Use expanded character spacing to increase legibility, especially for the ticket number and website address.

www.phantomtheatre.co.uk

 

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