OUDG404 Design Principles - The Anatomy of Type

Typeface vs Font

What's the difference? 

This is a font, an alphabet all of the characters of a typeface in the same point size. Originating from the letter press production method, fonts were not freely scalable as they are now.

This is a typeface. 

“the physical embodiment of a collection of letters, numbers, symbols, etc. (whether it’s a case of metal pieces or a computer file) is a font. When referring to the design of the collection (the way it looks) you call it a typeface.”

“The way I relate the difference between typeface and font to my students is by comparing them to songs and MP3s, respectively (or songs and CDs, if you prefer a physical metaphor).”

‘When you talk about how much you like a tune, you don’t say: “That’s a great MP3”. You say: “That’s a great song”. The MP3 is the delivery mechanism, not the creative work; just as in type a font is the delivery mechanism and a typeface is the creative work.’

“font is what you use, and typeface is what you see.”

Starting with Helvetica regular 12point

Here I have changed the FONT to Helvetica Regular 24 point.

Here I have changed the TYPEFACE to Gotham Light 12 point

Categories of typefaces:

Block - Block, black letter, Gothic, Old English, Black or Broken typefaces are based on the ornate writing style prevalent during the Middle Ages. Nowadays, they appear heavy and difficult to read as body copy.  

Script - Designed to imitate handwriting, script typefaces commonly imitate sable and bone methods of production. Before digital and moving type, script typefaces were hard to reproduce exactly.

Lucida Handwriting

Gothic - Sans Serif typefaces originally produced for movable type within printing presses, these typefaces are arguable less legible when used as body copy, however very legible when used as header type.

Roman - Serif typefaces originating from carving into stone hence the need for a serif. The classifications of Roman typefaces is abundant, this extract below is from Type Classifications by Allan Haley.

This is an image I took when in Denmark, the type has been carved into the stone and the need for serif is functional rather than imitating decoration as is when created digitally.

Point sizes

1 point = 1⁄72 inches = 25.4⁄72 mm = 0.3527 mm

12 points = 1 pica

Typeface family

Within a typeface family there is usually a range of weights and a oblique and/or italic font.

Regular

Semi - Bold

Bold

Italic

Semi bold Italic

Bold Italic

What is the difference between Oblique and Italic?

Regular, Italic and Oblique in Garamond.

Italic: 

'An italic is created by the type designer with specific characters (notably lowercase a) drawn differently to create a more calligraphic, as well as slanted version.'

'ITALIC type, rather than being a simple “slanting” of a normal typeface, is actually a hand-written version of the font family it belongs to, and it uses different “glyph” shapes, which all together gives it a very different appearance when compared to the original typeface. Since ITALICS emulate handwritten calligraphy fonts, they slant to the right, as this is the way a typical right-handed calligraphy scribe would slant the letters as well. If you have a keen eye for fonts, you might notice the upper-case letters of the ITALIC and OBLIQUE fonts look the same, and this is due to the fact that ITALIC typefaces use OBLIQUE upper-case letters, or “Swash Capitals.”'

Oblique: 

'In the purest (type designer) sense, an oblique is a roman font that has been skewed a certain number of degrees (8-12 degrees, usually.)'

'OBLIQUE type, although the name is very fancy, is quite simply put, normal type that has been skewed slightly to the right. Although it is commonly mistaken for italic (and many word processors with the “I” button, which obviously denotes “Italicize,” tend to skew the type rather than replacing the  font), the two are quite different.'