- Each typeface on a root level is based on character and drawing.
"Type is speech made visible"
- Through the process of the Industrial Revolution, there became a need for people to read.
- Less story tellers and town criers.
- Oral tradition had accents and emphasis. Lots of different oral dynamics.
- There was still a need for these verbal dynamics to be brought through into Typography.
- Different characteristics of typefaces helped to do this.
- Everyone can read into different fonts int he same context, but find their characteristics either more/less suitable.
- Certain dynamic to italic fonts that lean you forwards and you start to assign movement to it even though the text is still static.
- The images used can often help you to understand the typeface and what they're communicating as it gives more context and reinforces what you're thinking.
VOCABULARY:
- font
- typeface
- font family
- weight
- stroke
- uppercase
- lower case
- tracking
- kerning
- serif
- sans serif
- script
- blackletter
- display
- monotype
- symbol
Typeface
A collection of characters, letters, numbers, symbols, punctuation, etc which have the same distinct design.
Font
The physical means used to create a typeface, be it computer code, lithographic form, metal or woodcut.
A full font allows you to work with the entire glyphs, accents, punctuation etc of the western language.
A font isn't just about letterforms, it's about all the alphanumerics and glyphs.
BLOCK Garamond Block
GOTHIC Garamond Gothic PUT THESE ALL TOGETHER AND YOU
ROMAN Garamond Roman HAVE A TYPEFACE.
SCRIPT Garamond Script
Some type families have the full range of these categories within it, where as some type families just fit within one visual category.
- Multipe weight of fonts together make a TYPEFACE.
- Starts to become important in a financial way (buying one font will cost less than an entire typeface).
- Bold fonts start to condense.
- The type family is the broader collection of type elements.
- Font family isn't as broad, much smaller collection.
ROMAN: Serif Fonts
GOTHIC: Stripped down, sans serif
BLOCK: Bold, used for headlines. Heavy, black stroke.
SCRIPT: Fluid, handwritten style. Curlesk terminals.
Arial has a round full stop, Helvetica has a square full stop : easiest way of distinguishing between the two.
