I got a package-design job where I am a bit stuck in a problem, and this is it:
The company must (due to legal things) display an enormous amount of text on the design. The space I have for the placement has the dimensions of 10 cm × 15 cm and I’d like to even shrink it a bit to place more important other assets on it. We must use around 5200 chars on that space given. The text itself hasn’t got any priority to the “users”; it’s really a matter of legal issues why they need to display that amount of text on it. Therefore the text though must be still readable, but can have a tiny size as long as someone can read it with the package 10 cm apart of its nose.
The design of the previous designer uses a combination of:
- Myriad Pro Condensed Regular in 6.36 pt font-size and 7.64 pt line-height, they even scaled the font to 111 % vertical manually
- Myriad Pro Condensed Regular in 7.07 pt font-size and 8.48 pt line-height with 100 % vertical-scaling
I am not bound to a Corporate Font (not even to a category – if you know a well-suited Antiqua-typeset that can handle that nicely, I’ll go with it) or any font that is set by the laws of the country (like it is on cigarette packaging).
I remember Volkswagen once had a font designed that was still readable in 3 pt or 4 pt and it was originally created for that special task to be readable at that little size.
Now I am looking for a (condensed) typeface that is especially made for small sizes, e.g., by being made for tiny line-heights or having really enormous x-heights while still being well readable.