Common fonts used for newspaper design
I recently had the opportunity to take the lead on a redesign the Woolwich Observer. Knowing how many details would need ironing out, simply getting started seemed overwhelming.
First thing was first … I got myself a latte.
Coffee in hand, I began to obliterate a helpless piece of paper with disjointed notes and sketches outlining the many tasks that lay ahead. Selecting headline and body fonts was at the top of my to-do list. Sounds fun! Right?
After an hour of scanning through countless typefaces, my latte was gone, along with my enthusiasm for the redesign and my will to live. I decided to try a different approach.
I scoured the web to find out what other publications were doing. Here are some of my favourite fonts that are commonly used in newspaper design. (Click on the font title for a preview)
Common Headline Fonts
SANS SERIF |
SERIF |
Common Body Fonts
Let me know what you think. What does your paper use?
About the Author
Comments
Hi, I am from Sri Lanka, Here we use Nimrod as our body copy font for English publications.
Headline fonts vary with different titles.
For instance Sunday Times –
Feature Headlines: Franklin Gothic Condensed
News Headlines: ITC Charter
Daily Mirror –
Feature Headlines: Myriad Condensed
News Headlines: Centennial Bold
Oh! I like to see my face!!!!\
Hey Arun, If you’d like to see you picture with the comments you need to set up a gravatar.
http://www.gravatar.com/
Thanks for your comment!
Hey, thanks, I have just done that….
let’s see…
Hi, i am SONAM from bhutan. works with the weekly paper, bhutanobserver.
In our paper we use cambria for the headlines and Cambria Math for the body fonts.
For our newspaper we use
gill sans for the headlines
and palantino for the body.
Frankly, given the chance I’d use Swift, by Gerard Unger. It prints beautifully.
Perspective Sans for headlines, Quadraat for body.
We’re redesigning this year, though.
An interesting roundup Matt! Thanks. At our paper, we use the Rockwell family for weekday headlines and the Helvetica and Utopia family for headlines. The body is utopia.
I have to admit, I still find Utopia elegant for Sunday feature headlines. What do the rest here like?
I’m a college student in Madison, WI. Our colleges newspaper uses:
Body Copy: Times New Roman
Serif headline: Times New Roman MT
Sans headline: Arial MT
Things such bylines, captions, credits and all that are in variations of Arial. Kind of trashy, but I like to think we look okay. =)
Hello, I run a newspaper in bungsmelis and we use Times New Roman. Indeed
As an experienced writer, I’ve found that Times New Roman is an excellent resource. If you research newspapers in Bungsmelis, you will find a fabulous use of various writing tools. It’s a shame that their literacy rate is but 14%. Any rookies looking for writing tips and tricks, contact me on twitter. @FillmyDill Bung!
Gah poop!
Does anyone know what the Headline font for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is? I really like it’s blending of round and Sharp and the quirks of the terminals.
It’s entirely possible, Gabriel, it’s custom. But on the off-chance you have an iPhone, you can download an app called “What the Font”. It lets you scan a picture and the app will find the font online for you. 
@Gabriel
The headline font for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is called Warnock:
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/warnock/
If you ever want to know what font a newspaper uses, just download a front page pdf from newseum.org and open it up in Acrobat, then go to File >> Properties, and select the “font” tab and it will list all of the font titles used in the document.
@William
That sounds amazing, unfortunately I decided to get an Android phone, which I’ve found to be a bit of a mistake. But, I’ll look for a similar app for it.
@Matt
Good to know there is a surefire way to identify any font used in any PDF. Thanks a ton!
Matthew French
I'm a graphic designer at Sun Media's 24 Hours, a national daily commuter paper based out of Toronto.