Condensed Text Faces

Condensed text faces are handy when space is at a premium. You’ve probably noticed that some typefaces take up a lot more room than others. Compare the space occupied by the copy set in the two faces below, Garamond and Times. Times was created for the London Times specifically to save space yet still be eminently readable. You can tell even in this small sample that a large body of text in Times would fill significantly less space than the same size type in Garamond, even though Times appears to be larger (because of its x-height; see page 17 for details about the x-height).

The face on the left is Garamond; on the right is Times. Both are set 9 /12.

Get Non-Designer’s Type Book, The, Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.