Go to Blambot.com and start there. It will be worth it.
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Here is something from one of my former graphic designers:
Link
Are you asking more about what fonts would look good, or what kinds of fonts you should use to avoid issues like users missing fonts or overly large filesizes due to embedded fonts (and similar problems?)
I honestly don't know anything about PDFs, fonts, and the problems that could happen. I always thought when you made a PDF, the fonts would be embedded and not take up a large amount of space. However, I also have a lot of non-latin alphabet fonts, some of which I use in my english PDFs because they look cool, and I've had friends mention that certain parts of the PDFs appear as [][][]s. Maybe if the reader's PC doesn't have that type of alphabet installed, fonts of that kind don't work, even the latin characters.
However, that's the only issue I know about. Personally, there are a ton of good looking free fonts. Check out some PDFs that professional publishers use and see what fonts they've got embedded.
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what ever fonts you decide on, be sure you check the license.
There are fonts that are freely usable for commercial products (dafont is great for this as is the OFL). However, some fonts either are not available for commercial use or are only licensed for commercial use with a purchased license. As with most everything, fonts are protected by copyright, so protect yourself by checking on if a license is required (if not, do a screen grab at the time of download showing the statement of no license required/free for commercial use/etc) and if so what are the restrictions.
Regardless of whether you got with a free font or a licensed font make sure any font you use has all the characters you need. Nothing worse than realizing you just spent several hours doing layout only to find that the font was lacking a character you didn't think you would need.
EDIT: and yes, Scott, your former graphic designer was pretty well spot on. ;)
When I was doing some PDF work for an adventure, before the guy took my work and didn't pay me or deliver the product, I used Felix Titling for titles and headers, Constantia for normal body paragraphs, and Leelawadee for stat blocks. While it's not fancy, it looks nice and isn't bland like Times New Roman. Also, I like dropped caps at the beginning of each chapter. That's just me though.
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Pick a serif font for you main body text (serif fonts generally make for easier reading and scanning).
I generally go with a sans-serif font for statblocks and mechanical text (which can make it easier for third-party folks to find Open Game Content).
Do not use a super-fancy font in all-caps for headlines or sidebars text or sidebar headers. This makes it very hard to read—stick to using them as drop caps. I adore super fancy calligraphy fonts, but too much of a good thing makes it a bad thing. Use sparingly.
Edit: Also, if you copy text and you get a space between certain letters in a word, like "f" and "l"—have your layout person turn off ligatures. Ta-da!
Not to derail, but as a corollary, has any publisher used any of the fonts designed to make reading easier for readers with dyslexia? Do they help? And, are there any notable products (Paizo or 3PP) where the font size is too small for easy reading?
Never use papyrus for anything... ever.
{highlights all text and switches Papyrus to Comic Sans}
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Not to derail, but as a corollary, has any publisher used any of the fonts designed to make reading easier for readers with dyslexia? Do they help? And, are there any notable products (Paizo or 3PP) where the font size is too small for easy reading?
Never use papyrus for anything... ever.{highlights all text and switches Papyrus to Comic Sans}
I haven't, but will look into those.
<swats AS in the back of the head for not looking at the list of banned fonts ;) >
EDIT: Myriad Pro is one I have used, though it was not one of the fonts designed specifically to aid those with dyslexia. I've also used Calibri and Century Gothic for client projects (not RPG related). Of those three, I preferred Myriad Pro.
Not to derail, but as a corollary, has any publisher used any of the fonts designed to make reading easier for readers with dyslexia? Do they help? And, are there any notable products (Paizo or 3PP) where the font size is too small for easy reading?
Never use papyrus for anything... ever.{highlights all text and switches Papyrus to Comic Sans}
I think I just threw up in my mouth.
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Pick a serif font for you main body text (serif fonts generally make for easier reading and scanning).
I generally go with a sans-serif font for statblocks and mechanical text (which can make it easier for third-party folks to find Open Game Content).
Do not use a super-fancy font in all-caps for headlines or sidebars text or sidebar headers. This makes it very hard to read—stick to using them as drop caps. I adore super fancy calligraphy fonts, but too much of a good thing makes it a bad thing. Use sparingly.Edit: Also, if you copy text and you get a space between certain letters in a word, like "f" and "l"—have your layout person turn off ligatures. Ta-da!
This.
When I do layout work, combining fonts does help readers follow along the articles/ads/stories we're presenting.
Here's a cheat sheet I use.
Free fonts are great and all, but please don't try and use a headline fonts as your body copy. It will kill your "look" real quick, and make it hard to read. So Papyrus...yeah, I'm looking at you.