I’ve been working with the Trebuchet typeface heavily on a project for the last 3 weeks. I hate Trebuchet and don’t think I would use it if the decision to do so wasn’t made long before I entered the project. However, I have figured out how to work with it’s quirkiness, and I think these guidelines apply to similar faces.

• Give it space. Trebuchet is prickly and unpredictable, so give it nice wide lanes. Leading should be about 160-180% and go as wide as possible with your margins (sometimes it never feels right, but keep at it). Keep it light, too, as this will mask some of it’s quirks. (I don’t hate quirkiness, but it’s not a good effect in long paragraphs of text.
• Does not play nicely with others. And by “others” I’m referring to other “Web-safe” fonts. Rounded and condensed faces nearly worked out well for headlines and buttons (Segoe Condensed, Unit Rounded), but eventually I settled on Trebuchet everywhere and just introduced contrast through color and case.
• 14px or 15px is the ideal size for the web. I’m doing 14px with a 20px line-height, color #444444, and it reads pretty well. Don’t go much smaller, especially if your setting paragraphs of text.
• Looks good at a small size when set in uppercase and tracked loosely. With the all-caps, again you’re reducing the quirks and it almost feels like a different face. In fact, you’ll see a lot of small headings and labels around the web set like this because it is quite pretty.