Body Text For MAGAZINE DESIGNING
Body text is a very important element for designing a magazine page. Though readers do not notice body text much when they read but they notice how it is organized with nice images, headlines and structure. But if the body text is not good, the page will not look perfect and organized.
For a perfect body text, we need to know 3 things :
Choosing body text font
Body text sizes
Body text alignment
Choosing body text font
We need to choose a proper body text font that will suit for publication. You can choose serif fonts that have proven to be a great choice for body text. Some of them are Caslon, Jenson, Chronicle, Miller, Palatino, Garamond and Goudy to name a few. Although they are popular, never ever use Didot and Bodoni or any similar font for body text. They are not intended for display at small sizes and for lengthy article reading because of their big contrast in thick and thin strokes.
If you choose a sans serif type you can choose from the usual suspects like Helvetica, Franklin, Univers, Gill sans, Meta, Swiss and so on. Though sans serif fonts is a bit harder to read than serif fonts, you should increase the leading up to 135-140% for easier line to line eye transition.
Body text sizes
To designing a magazine the first thing to do is to choose the body text font and its size. The size of the body text should work with the width of the column and it should be appropriate for the targeted audience like for older people, size should be bigger, as it is for small children.
Body text sizes can range from 9pt to even 12pt. But we should not go below 9pt and over 12pt. Newspapers are usually set in 10pt, but this is not a rule set in stone. The size also depends on the x-height of the font selected. X-height makes type look big or small. Leading should be set at default 120%. For narrower columns you can decrease it and for wider you should increase it.
Body text allignment
There are only two options for body text alignment. Left and justified. Never centered and never aligned right.
There are almost no differences in readability of text aligned left and justified. If you plan to use justified alignment, adjust properly its justifying settings.
Text aligned left can provide some valuable white space in text columns and it does not create a dull horizontal look like justified text columns.
Sometimes you can use vertical thin rules to divide the text columns of text aligned to the left. It will make these columns look tidier but if your text is justified, there is no need for vertical rules between the text columns are already perfectly straight in a vertical line.
Each paragraph of text can have a horizontal indent in the first line of the paragraph. The paragraph just below the subhead does not have to be indented. Indent should be from 3-5 mm, depending on the width of the text column. Instead of indent, you can use drop caps at the beginnings of the paragraph, but do not over do it. Also never indent the paragraph that has drop cap applied.
I think this article and the blog I made is helpful and gave a proper idea for those who choose to design magazine.
