The p-Code Machine

In the past I have frequently ranted about typography, however I’ve been forgetting an essential aspect: Paper! The plain old 80gsm plain white office paper just won’t cut it. When selecting paper for official publications you should consider the following aspects:

• Color: This is heavily dependent on your selection of fonts. Whenever you use sans-serif fonts in your publication you should stick with white paper. If you went with old style serif fonts (like Garamond, Palatino) you might want to consider using beige or creme tinted paper. Creme paper will look less harsh in artificial light without compromising legibility.

• Weight: Never use 80gsm office paper for official publications. This will just scream “I didn’t care”. At the very least go for 90gsm. I personally prefer 100gsm.

• Quality: Not all paper is suitable for archival purposes. Good paper complies with either ISO 9706:1994 or ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Both standards dictate important aspects of paper like pH, alkaline reserve, tear resistance and resistance to oxidation. Compliant paper should easily last a hunderd years, if not more.

• Coating: Only use glossy coated paper for brochures. Reading large texts on glossy paper is a bad idea at best.

• Environment: Good paper should comply with environmental guidelines specified by the FSC.

Last but not least, I can highly recommend (100gsm) BioTop-3 paper. BioTop-3 is matte creme paper which complies with ISO 9706 and FSC guidelines.