Personal computers have brought incredibly sophisticated and powerful typography tools to the professional and novice user alike. Typography is ubiquitous: it’s seen every day and everywhere. There are thousands of typefaces and fonts — most of them designed for specific uses (e.g., book text, newspaper text, etc.) or to convey specific moods, impressions, and ideas. Today, and over the next couple of posts, we’ll provide a little background about this fascinating topic.
What is the difference between a font and a typeface?
A font is the complete assortment of type of one face and one size, including upper and lowercase letters, punctuation, numerals and other special characters. A typeface is a particular style of type design including the full range of characters in all sizes. More simply, a typeface called Minion-Pro refers to and includes all the variations of Minion-Pro; Minion-Pro fonts ARE the variations of Minion-Pro such as Minion-Pro Bold, Minion-Pro Italic, Minion-Pro Italic Bold — each is a separate font.
What’s In a Name?
Fonts are traditionally named by or for the individual designer of the typeface (e.g., Caslon, Garamond & Goudy reflect the names of designers William Caslon,1692–1766; Claude Garamond, 1480–1561 and Frederic Goudy, 1865–1947 respectively). In modern times, type foundries have appended their names to typefaces they have digitized (e.g., Adobe Caslon, Adobe Garamond, etc.).
Fonts may be named to reflect their intended purpose or usage (e.g., Wedding Text or Stencil). In addition, font names may reflect cultural or historical heritage. Helvetica is derived from Confederation Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland. A Swiss designer, Max Miedinger, designed Helvetica in 1957 to compete with the typeface Akzidnez Grotesk, the first modern sans-serif typeface originally released in 1896 by the Swiss type foundry H. Berthold AG.
One additional quirk: although a font name can be copyrighted or trademarked, the actual design of the letterforms cannot. Hence, the proliferation of differently named fonts that look identical—and which are, in fact, identical—is due to this loophole in the law.
General Type Categories
Serif – Traditional faces derived from Roman letterforms with varying stroke widths. Used primarily for body text because of its readability. Conveys notions of tradition, stability and dependability.
Sans-Serif – Modern letterforms with (typically) uniform stroke widths. Designed for legibility in larger, non-text sizes.
Display – General term for type set larger than surrounding text as in headings. Many display faces are designed to convey distinct moods, cultures or historical referents.
Formal & Informal Script – Faces derived from cursive handwriting of an elegant, refined or calligraphic nature.
Informal Modern – Faces derived from informal handwriting encompassing cursive and non-cursive letterforms.
Blackletter – Faces derived from medieval German letterforms. Often referred to as Old English or Gothic.
If you have any questions about Typography, give us a call at 330-597-8560. We’re happy to help you get ready for your next trade show!
Used with permission from from A Basic Font Primer by TH Design, Inc.
