Good copy needs a good font…
Right, so I’ve got a question for all you copywriters out there… When I sit down to write a piece of copy, the first thing I’ll do is change the font. Flick through the list until I find something that suits my mood or the piece I’m writing – and I genuinely can’t start writing until I’m happy. Somehow the copy reads better when it’s in the right font. Is this just some off superstition of mine or do you do it too? And to all the designers out there – am I just a typographical soul at heart? |
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I write copy in 11-point calibri, zoomed to 110 percent. It’s pretty bog-standard on Vista, but I really like the As and the Es and the sort of flatness of it. Weird. For fiction, I go with sylfaen, 12-point, with double-spaced paragraphs. Or plain notepad, which is as basic as anything.
Definitely in some cases, especially when the piece needs to be particularly friendly or overly formal. ie, writing something with Innocent’s tone of voice just wouldn’t work in Times Roman, would it?
I always like to see copy when it has been ‘dropped in’, as fonts can change the rhythm and flow of words. Though as a freelancer, I rarely get this privilege.
Oh, and sometimes I convert client amends into Comic Sans :-)
Sad to admit, but I’m an Arial 11 point man. 1.5 line spacing. Nice and easy to read aloud. Anyway, I’ll get me coat. But when the words appear on a Mac, well, that’s another story. I’m firmly with Jason on that one.
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I simply must have Calibri at 11 point, and set the zoom to about 100-125% – I love how small and neat it looks, which is a total contrast to my actual writing :-)
My most recent font crushes have been Verdana and Trebuchet MS (and Arial seems to work best on my blog depsite me veering wildly between fonts), and when I was at school the APEX of sophistication was, for me, Garamond Narrow. How I loved that cool and smart American aesthetic, with Every Word in The Titles Capitalised!
Don’t get me wrong JayZed, I’m Arial 11 mostly, except where the agency has Calibri :-).
I don’t even think about changing the font when I’m writing copy… thanks for the tip! I’ll try it out and tell you how it goes. :)