: Sans-serif fonts for body text Which sans-serif fonts are best suited for body text? Currently I think about Gill Sans, Proxima Nova or Frutiger, but since I'm not full-stack graphic designer

@Bethany839

I frequently work on long documents with alot of text. More than one company that I have worked for has named the narrow version of Helvetica or Arial as the brand typeface. I have never heard any complaints about readability. So, you might want to check one of those typefaces out.

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@Murray976

In print, using sans serif typefaces for body copy is a very poor choice. If the copy is designed to be printed and read, you should use a serif typeface. I personally like more humanist serifs - Stone Informal, Stone Serif, Goudy, Garamond, etc.

If the text is to remain digital, and only be read on screen, then sans serif is preferred. However, out of your three designated choices, I would not use any of them. Gill Sans and Frutiger tend to be too unique to be uniformly read easily in body text. Proxima Nova is just ugly in some respects to me. I'd much prefer standards such as Helvetica, Open Sans, etc. The important aspect is easy and fluid readability, not "uniqueness".

But really, for personal use, it doesn't matter a great deal. Use whatever you prefer.

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@Berumen635

The system version of Gill Sans is not ideal for body text - it's too bold and rather tightly spaced. Bliss Regular is excellent (Bliss is very similar to Gill Sans, but with a more even series of weights from light to bold) but that's rather pricey. TheSans from Lukas De Groot is for four styles in the Office version, which is quite good for one of the world's top font designers. Ideal Sans from Hoefler & Co is 9 for four styles - again very nicely designed.

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@Shanna688

Between the 3, I would choose the Proxima family. Note that while these will work with Word, using a top-end font family is more suited for more advanced editors which can really render your fonts properly and use all the open type features packed with the fonts.

Also, sharing the files with other people (if needed) means they will also need the fonts installed to see the same thing you're seing.

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