MG partner Scott Goldman worked with The Spokesman-Review staff on developing multiple agate styles for use throughout the paper. Despite the reduction in page size, it was a great opportunity to increase legibility of agate styles from sports to business with the addition of new typefaces.

The old agate style (left) was Franklin Gothic condensed, at an astonishing 5.5-point size and 80 percent horizontal scaling. To be sure, everything would fit on one line — but who could read it? Stocks listings were very much the same — Helvetica 5.5 point, at 80 percent horizontal scaling.

To help with balancing content with legibility, we used different weights of the extremely versatile Whitney font from Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

New stocks pages highlight Whitney Condensed at 6.2 point on 6.5 leading (100 percent scaling), but we got an extra bonus with regard to legibility by testing the medium weight of the font, and found only a minimal change in character width. So we opted for the medium weight as an extra bump in readibility.
New sports agate wound up the same way. A final test showed a minimal change in width by going for the medium, and the contrast between the bold and medium is more than adequate, so our agate wound up at Whitney—Medium, 6.5 on 7 point.

The readability difference is quite dramatic, and we were still able to make the agate work in several different situations.