Thickness?

I'm creating some text with Verdana currently there are four lines of text but the first line of text is a much bigger font size (it needs to be much more prominent), I've been playing around with changing the font size, and trying bold(which from what I understand is frowned upon by true font lovers), is there anyway to make the text a little thicker? or this there another quite similar font which is thicker?

edit: forgot to mention, using photoshop's bold makes it too thick which is why I have turned to you guys...

The best thing is to use a typeface with varying weights. It looks like you are looking for a medium weight font which has a "thickness" between a Roman and Bold weight.

Popular Sans Serif faces like Helvetica Neue Medium are my favourite. If you are in the creative industry and use a lot of typography, I suggest you invest in something like Adobe Font Folio or you can also purchase individual fonts and weights from various type foundries.

I'm just curious, does Helvetica Neue come as a standard font on some computers? looking into it, to get a full pack of 51 fonts in the family costs close to $1,000... just curious who pays/can afford this kind of stuff...