Primary: Neue Haas Grotesk
A modern grotesque sans serif that shares the shapes, curves and success of its forebear, Akzidenz-Grotesk, released in Berlin in 1896. Neue Haas Grotesk was designed by Max Miedinger in 1957 and is better suited to the tasks of the 21st century: in our case, the wide and multi-medium dissemination of information pertinent to an interested, engaged and diverse public.
Across all systems, headlines are Bold and flowing passages, body copy, notes and breathy statements are Roman. Use the other weights conservatively and thoughtfully.
Standard color schema
Inverse color schema
Text sizes
The Department of Information graphic identity system's intention is to communicate a strong, authoritative, and consistent image.
The Department of Information graphic identity system's intention is to communicate a strong, authoritative image.
The Department of Information graphic identity system's intention is to communicate.
Headlines
The Department of Information graphic identity system's intention is to communicate a strong, authoritative, and consistent image.
The Department of Information graphic identity system's intention is to communicate a strong, authoritative, and consistent image.
Secondary: Baskerville
Under certain circumstances the seriousness a serifed font affords may be necessary: official letters, notices, books, articles and some types of report. Baskerville, in Medium weight, is the preferred face for those printed and digital flowing texts. When it’s unavailable, Georgia is a suitable replacement.
The Department of Information graphic identity system's intention is to communicate a strong, authoritative, and consistent image.
The Department of Information graphic identity system's intention is to communicate a strong, authoritative, and consistent image.
The Department of Information graphic identity system's intention is to communicate a strong image.
The Department of Information graphic identity system's intention.
On the web, Baskerville URW is stood in for by Libre Baskerville, which has Regular, Bold and Italic. The manual's Medium and Ultra Bold have no web equivalent yet.
Flowing text and articles
Technical documents, whitepapers, scientific studies, press releases and manuals (such as this one) are best set in Neue Haas Grotesk. Articles and long reading take Baskerville. The same rules apply on screen and in print.
Headlines are bold and much tighter in leading than flowing body text.
In 1886 the Government Paid Artists to Paint Hundreds of Fruit and Nut Varieties
45–75 characters per line. A ragged edge is fine; keep hyphenation to a minimum.
What may be an example of one of the greatest celebrations of cataloguing, edible nature and art as a means of production civilization has ever realized exists in its entirety in the probable basement of the United States National Agricultural Library. Luckily for us it also exists on a frankly quite unloved government website, which introduces us to phrases like “historical botanical reference” and “USDA plant explorers”.
Pull quotes punctuate the paragraph font: same proportions, much larger and heavier.
The avant-garde digital property introduces us to phrases like “historical botanical reference.”
Images embedded in flowing text are 16:9. Captions, footnotes and fine print use the sans.
Here we are introduced to the Clausena lansium, or “wampee,” by government plant propagandist Elsie E. Lower.
On black, mark links with an underline, not color. On Manila, use both color and underline.
Set citations, footnotes or fine print smaller than 6.5pt in print or 10px on screen.
From the archives
