Finding the Right Font for Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before

As the interior designer for Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before, one of my biggest challenges was choosing a font for the book. The obvious first requirement is a font that reads well in large blocks at a small size. With that in mind, I started by collecting a list of fonts that felt stylistically appropriate for the voice and subject matter of Karelia’s book. I fell in love with Caecilia and the way its easy curves and slab serifs felt strong without seeming stodgy.

forgive-caecilia-web

But when I did a test run and set a chapter in Caecilia, I found that it didn’t move well when I adjusted tracking, which would make it difficult to fix widows and orphans when laying out the interior. So I crossed that off my list and moved on.

My next choice was Cantoria, which flows beautifully but still manages to feel a bit edgy and daring with its spur serifs and diamond-shaped tittles.

forgive-cantoria-web

It felt appropriate for a book about a girl who wears combat boots as well as elegant floor-length skirts, and it felt appropriate for her story. I was extremely excited to use Cantoria because it was designed in 1986, and thus fits nicely with the timeline of the book. After checking that I liked its italic and that it contained the necessary accented glyphs for the French and Spanish words that pop up occasionally in the book’s dialogues, I made my official decision to use Cantoria for Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before‘s interior.