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Typeface Trivia

Become a Type Snob in 10 minutes. 💝

If you have any suggestion (correction or addition) please mention it in the Discussion forum.

Contents

Typeface Variants or Fonts

  • Bold
  • Italics
  • Small Caps (SC)
  • Normal/Roman/Medium/Text/Book/Regular
  • Condensed / Narrow
  • Extended
  • Display / Titling
  • Rounded
  • Outline / Inline
  • Shadowed
  • Mono / Code
by WEIGHT by WIDTH
Thin/Hairline Condensed
Extra/UltraLight SemiCondensed (SCd)
Light Normal/Roman
Regular/Book SemiExpanded
Medium/Text Expanded/Extended
Semi/DemiBold
Bold
Extra/UltraBold
Black/Heavy

Default Fonts

Application Font Name
Windows Segoe UI
MacOS San Francisco
iOS San Francisco
Android Roboto
MS Office Aptos, Calibri
Google Docs Arial
TeX Computer Modern
Kindle Bookerly
Google Play Books Literata

In early days Apple licensed fonts from Linotype and Microsoft from Monotype. Linotype and Monotype were the Apple vs. Microsoft of its era (i.e. hot metal typesetting days) and they had (metrically) similar fonts.

Apple Microsoft
Linotype Monotype
Helvetica Arial
Times Roman Times New Roman
Courier Courier New

Fonts in U.S. Elections

Year Font
2000 Myriad
2004 Helvetica Extended
2008 Gotham
2012 Proxima Nova
2016 Poppins
2020 Inter

Type Classification

The common typeface classifications are:

  1. Serif
  2. Sans serif
  3. Monospaced
  4. Display
  5. Script

Vox-ATypI Classification (Deprecated)

┌── Classicals [Oldstyle/Antiqua]
│   ├── Humanist
│   ├── Garalde [Aldine]
│   └── Transitional [Realist]
│
├── Moderns
│   ├── Didone
│   ├── Mechanistic [Slab Serif/Egyptian]
│   └── Lineal [Sans-Serif]
│       │
│       ├── Grotesque [Gothic]
│       ├── Neo-grotesque
│       ├── Geometric
│       └── Humanist
│
├── Calligraphics
│   ├── Glyphic [incised]
│   ├── Script [cursive]
│   ├── Graphic [manual]
│   ├── Blackletter
│   └── Gaelic
│
└── Non-Latin

Classicals

  • Humanist: Centaur, Adobe Jenson, Trinité, Golden Type, Cloister Old Style
  • Garalde: Garamond, Bembo, Sabon, Minion, Palatino, Caslon, Janson
  • Transitional: Baskerville, Times, Joanna, Mrs Eaves, Miller, Perpetua

Moderns

  • Didone: Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Ambroise, Scotch Roman
  • Mechanistic: Clarendon, Egyptienne, Rockwell
  • Lineal

Lineal

  • Grotesque: Akzidenz Grotesk, Franklin Gothic, Knockout
  • Neo-grotesque: Univers, Helvetica, DIN, Bell Centennial, Folio, Interstate
  • Geometric: Futura, Eurostile, Gotham, Neutraface, Avant Garde Gothic, Kabel, Erbar
  • Humanist: Gill Sans, Optima, Johnston, Frutiger, Meta, Myriad, Tahoma, Verdana, Trebuchet MS

Calligraphics

  • Glyphic: Copperplate Gothic, Trajan, Lithos
  • Script: Mistral, Francesca, Zapfino, Brush Script
  • Graphic: Banco and Klang
  • Blackletter: Fette Fraktur, Goudy Text, Old English, Textura, Schwabacher
  • Gaelic: Duibhlinn, Uncial

Renowned Type Foundries

  1. Monotype
    1. Linotype
    2. Ascender Corp
    3. Bitstream
    4. FontFont (FF) (fontshop.com)
    5. Fontsmith
    6. URW Type Foundry
    7. Hoefler & Co.
    8. Berthold
    9. International Typeface Corporation (ITC)
    10. Colophon
  2. Adobe Originals
  3. American Type Founders (ATF) [Defunct]
  4. Apple Inc.
  5. Bauer type foundry
  6. Blambot
  7. Dalton Maag
  8. Dharma Type
  9. Emigre
  10. Font Bureau
  11. Google Design
  12. Indian Type Foundry (ITF)
  13. P22 Type Foundry
  14. Paratype
  15. Typotheque
  16. Klim Type Foundry
  17. Hoefler & Co.
  18. Frere-Jones
  19. Grilli Type
  20. Lineto
  21. DSType Foundry
  22. Letters From Sweden
  23. Lost Type Co-op
  24. Foster Type
  25. DJR
  26. Dunwich Type
  27. Edition Studio
  28. Exljbris
  29. Fatype
  30. Florian Karsten
  31. HvD Fonts
  32. Just Another Foundry
  33. Kometa
  34. Milieu Grotesque
  35. Nodo
  36. Nonpareille
  37. Nouvelle Noire
  38. Or Type
  39. Pangram Pangram Foundry
  40. Pizza Typefaces
  41. Play Type
  42. Pretend Foundry
  43. Studio René Bieder
  44. General Type Studio
  45. Bruta Types

Prominent Type Designers

  1. JOHANNES GUTENBERG (German)
  2. CLAUDE GARAMOND (French)
  3. JOHN BASKERVILLE (British)
  4. GIAMBATTISTA BODONI (Italian)
  5. FIRMIN DIDOT (French)
  6. JOHANN CHRISTIAN BAUER (German) Fette Fraktur
  7. FREDERIC GOUDY (American) Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley
  8. EDWARD JOHNSTON (British)
  9. MORRIS FULLER BENTON (American) Franklin Gothic, Century Schoolbook, News Gothic, Bank Gothic, Hobo
  10. PAUL RENNER (German) Futura
  11. OSWALD BRUCE 'OZ' COOPER (American) Cooper Black
  12. ERIC GILL (British) Gill Sans, Perpetua, Joanna
  13. STANLEY MORISON (British) Times New Roman (with Victor Lardent), revival of Baskerville
  14. JAN TSCHICHOLD (Swiss) Sabon, Zeus
  15. MAX MIEDINGER (Swiss) Helvetica (with Eduard Hoffmann)
  16. HERMANN ZAPF (German) Optima, Palatino, ITC Zapf Chancery, ITC Zapf Dingbats, Zapfino
  17. ED BENGUIAT (American) Tiffany, Bookman, Panache, Souvenir, Benguiat and Benguiat Gothic.
  18. ADRIAN FRUTIGER (Swiss) Univers, Frutiger, Avenir
  19. MARGARET CALVERT (British) Transport, Rail Alphabet, Motorway, Calvert
  20. MATTHEW CARTER (British) Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma, Bell Centennial, Skia
  21. DONALD KNUTH (American) Computer Modern
  22. ERIK SPIEKERMANN (German) FF Meta, ITC Officina Sans, FF Info
  23. ROBERT SLIMBACH (American) Minion, Adobe Garamond, Utopia, Garamond Premier
  24. NEVILLE BRODY (British) FF Blur, Industria, Arcadia, England Brody Typeface, TCCC Unity, SamsungOne Typeface
  25. CAROL TWOMBLY (American) Trajan, Myriad, Adobe Caslon
  26. ALBERT-JAN POOL (Dutch) FF DIN, DIN 1451
  27. MARTIN MAJOOR (Dutch) FF Scala (1991) Telefont (1994)
  28. ZUZANA LICKO (Slovak-born American) Mrs Eaves (based on Baskerville) and Filosofia (based on Bodoni).
  29. STEVE MATTESON (American) Segoe, Aptos, Droid, Liberation font family, Noto and Open Sans
  30. JONATHAN HOEFLER (American) Hoefler Text, Requiem, Archer (with Frere-Jones)
  31. TOBIAS FRERE-JONES (American) Gotham, Interstate, Archer (with Jonathan Hoefler)

Typography Timeline

┌── 1440 - Blackletter (Johannes Gutenberg)
├── 1470 - Roman Type (Nicolas Jenson)
├── 1501 - Italics (Aldus Manutius and Francesco Griffo)
│
├── 1720 - Old Style (William Caslon)
├── 1757 - Transitional (John Baskerville)
├── 1784 - Modern (Didot and Bodoni 1791)
├── 1803 - Fat Face (Robert Thorne)
│
├── 1816 - Sans Serif (William Caslon IV)
├── 1815 - Slab Serif (Vincent Figgins)
├── 1896 - Akzidenz-Grotesk
├── 1927 - Futura
├── 1957 - Univers, Helvetica
│
├── 1965 - Bitmap fonts
├── 1974 - Vector or Outline fonts
├── 1976 - Frutiger
├── 1984 - PostScript (Adobe)
├── 1991 - TrueType (Apple)
├── 1996 - OpenType (Microsoft and Adobe)
├── 1996 - CSS
├── 2009 - Web Open Font Format (WOFF)
└── 2016 - Variable fonts

Eras of Printing Technology

┌── 3200 BC - Handwriting and calligraphy
├── 220 AD - Woodblock printing
├── 1040 AD (China) - Movable type letterpress printing
├── 1450 AD (Europe) - Movable type letterpress printing
├── 1800s - Wooden font molds
├── 1886 - Continuous casting (Linotype) (Hot metal typesetting)
├── 1950s - Phototypesetting (Cold type)
└── 1980s to present - Digital typography

Often Disliked Fonts

There is no such thing as a bad font. There are only bad uses for fonts.

  1. Algerian
  2. Bleeding Cowboys
  3. Brush Script
  4. Chalkboard
  5. Comic Sans
  6. Cooper Black
  7. Copperplate
  8. Curlz
  9. Hobo
  10. Impact
  11. Lobster
  12. Lucida Handwriting
  13. Papyrus
  14. Souvenir
  15. Trajan
  16. Zapfino

Open-Source Typeface Projects

  1. Bitstream Vera - donated by Matthew Carter, clones of Arial and Charter
  2. DejaVu fonts - derived from Bitstream Vera (sans-serif) and Bitstream Charter (serif).
  3. GNU FreeFont - Based on URW++ Nimbus, similar to Times, Helvetica and Courier.
  4. Liberation Fonts - metrically compatible with Arial, Arial Narrow, Times New Roman and Courier New link
  5. Linux Libertine - similar to Times and Optima
  6. Nimbus Core - URW++ clones of Courier, Helvetica and Times
  7. PT Fonts - by ParaType for the project "Public Types of Russian Federation"
  8. QT Fonts - 151 fonts by Qualitype
  9. STIX Fonts project - Scientific and Technical Information Exchange, visually compatible with the Times New Roman family
  10. The TeX Gyre (TG) Collection of Fonts
    1. Adventor (ITC Avant Garde Gothic)
    2. Bonum (ITC Bookman)
    3. Chorus (ITC Zapf Chancery)
    4. Cursor (Courier)
    5. Heros (Helvetica)
    6. Pagella (Palatino)
    7. Schola (Century Schoolbook)
    8. Termes (Times New Roman)

Typeface Superfamilies

A superfamily is the collective grouping of several explicitly related type families—such as a serif, sans, and slab—that all share the same underlying structure to their design.

  • Stone by Sumner Stone, comprising Stone Serif, Stone Sans and Stone Informal
  • Rotis by Otl Aicher, comprising rotis serif, rotis semi-serif, rotis semi-sans and rotis sans
  • Corporate ASE by Kurt Weidemann, comprising Antiqua, Sans and Egyptienne
  • Thesis by Lucas de Groot, comprising TheSans, TheSerif, TheMix and TheAntiqua
  • FF Meta by Erik Spiekermann, comprising FF Meta, FF Meta Plus, and FF Meta Serif
  • Scala by Martin Majoor, comprising FF Scala, FF Scala Sans, FF Scala Jewel, and FF Scala Hands
  • Sassoon by Rosemary Sassoon and Adrian William Sassoon, comprising Sans, Sassoon Book, Sassoon Primary, Sassoon Infant and Sassoon Sans Slope
  • Computer Modern by Donald E. Knuth for TeX default, comprising cmr (antiqua), cmss (grotesque) and cmtt (monospaced)
  • PT Fonts (ParaType Russia) by Alexandra Korolkova et al, comprising PT Serif, PT Sans and PT Mono.
  • Liberation by Steve Matteson, comprising Liberation Sans, Liberation Serif and Liberation Mono
  • Droid (Google) by Steve Matteson, comprising Droid Sans, Droid Serif and Droid Sans Mono.
  • DIN Next by Akira Kobayashi and Monotype, comprising DIN Next, DIN Next Rounded, DIN Next Slab, and DIN Next Stencil
  • Roboto (Google) by Christian Robertson, comprising Roboto, condensed, Roboto Slab and Roboto Mono
  • Source (Adobe) by Paul D. Hunt and Frank Grießhammer, comprising Source Sans Pro, Source Serif Pro and Source Code Pro
  • Merriweather by Eben Sorkin, comprising Merriweather and Merriweather Sans
  • Noto (Google) comprising Noto Sans, Noto Serif and Noto Mono, an expansion of the Droid family.
  • Fira - Sans, mono, and code ligatures
  • Alegreya - Serif, sans serif, and samll caps
  • Quattrocento + Sans
  • IBM Plex by Mike Abbink, comprising IBM Plex Sans, IBM Plex Sans Condensed, IBM Plex Serif and IBM Plex Mono
  • Inria - Serif and sans serif, also swashes.
  • Gandhi - Serif and sans
  • KP Fonts Serif & KP Sans-Serif
  • Bespoke - Sans, serif, slab, and stencil styes

Custom Corporate Fonts

  1. Airbnb Cereal by Dalton Maag on GitHub
  2. Amazon Ember for Echo & Bookerly for Kindle by Dalton Maag
  3. Apple's San Francisco on GitHub
  4. Atlassian's Charlie Sans by Oh No Type
  5. Balsamiq Sans Font on GitHub
  6. BBC Reith by Dalton Maag
  7. Cal Sans used by cal.com
  8. Canva Sans by Colophon Foundry
  9. Cisco Sans on GitHub
  10. Coca Cola's TCCC Unity by Brody Associates
  11. Discord Ginto Nord for branding and gg sans for UI
  12. Dropbox's Sharp Grotesk by Sharp Type
  13. Duolingo's Feather Bold by Monotype
  14. Durex's One Night Sans by Colophon
  15. eBay's Market Sans
  16. Goldman Sans
  17. HackerNoon Font
  18. HP Simplified by Dalton Maag
  19. iA-Fonts on GitHub
  20. Intel's Clear Sans & One Mono
  21. Instagram Sans by Colophon
  22. JetBrains Mono on GitHub
  23. Meta's Optimistic Font by Dalton Maag and Saffron
  24. Netflix Sans by Dalton Maag
  25. Nokia Pure by Dalton Maag Ltd replaced Nokia Sans created by Erik Spiekermann
  26. PayPal Sans by Klim Type Foundry
  27. Pinterest Sans by Grilli Type
  28. Reddit Sans
  29. Red Hat fonts on GitHub by MCKL
  30. Salesforce Sans by Monotype
  31. SAP's 72 Font family
  32. Samsung's Sharp Sans by Sharp Type for Galaxy & SamsungOne for One UI
  33. Spotify Mix by Dinamo
  34. Supernotes' SN Pro - based on Nunito
  35. TikTok Sans
  36. Tripadvisor's Trip Sans by Colophon
  37. Twilio Sans Mono by Sharp Type
  38. Twitter's Chirp by Grilli Type
  39. Uber Move by MCKL
  40. Ubisoft Sans by Colophon
  41. Ubuntu Font Family by Dalton Maag
  42. Vercel's Geist
  43. Vodafone typeface by Dalton Maag
  44. Wix Madefor by Dalton Maag
  45. YouTube Sans with design agency Saffron

Fonts by Government and Public Institutions

  1. Public Sans by U.S. Web Design System (USWDS)
  2. Canada1500
  3. Sweden Sans
  4. Cooper Hewitt from Smithsonian Design Musium on GitHub
  5. e-Ukraine
  6. +Jakarta Sans
  7. Atkinson Hyperlegible by Braille Institute for low vision readers
  8. B612 - Aeronautical Font by Airbus for cockpit screens
  9. National Park Typeface
  10. SORA typeface - neutral sans serif typeface

Notable Free Fonts

  1. Adobe's Source Type Family on GitHub
  2. Mozilla's Fira Type Family on GitHub
  3. IBM Plex on GitHub
  4. GitHub's Monaspace superfamily & Mona Sans
  5. Inter originally built for Figma
  6. London Underground Dot-Matrix Typeface
  7. Averia - the average font
  8. Routed Gothic Font - lettering style found on technical drawings (More links to other fonts)
  9. Redaction
  10. Cantarell
  11. ZXX - Illegible to OCR
  12. QCMU - to make diagrams of quantum circuits!
  13. Scunthorpe Sans - censors bad language automatically
  14. OpenDyslexic - A typeface for Dyslexia
  15. Shake - A Typeface with Parkinson's
  16. FE-Schrift - forgery-impeding typeface for licence plates.
  17. LAIKA – a dynamic typeface
  18. Luciole - for visually impaired people
  19. Universal Sans

Fonts on GitHub (Excluding Google Fonts)

  1. Common Sans A neo-grotesque sans serif font family
  2. Open Sauce Fonts Creative Sauce's internal type super family.
  3. Open Runde rounded variant of Inter.
  4. Young Serif a heavy weight old style serif typeface
  5. Optician Sans Typeface based on the historical eye charts and optotypes used by opticians world wide.
  6. Metropolis A modern, geometric typeface.
  7. Wanted Sans Geometric with a heart, Humanist with a soul
  8. Techna Sans Sharp, geometric typeface
  9. Overused Grotesk - classic neo-grotesk Swiss design
  10. Aspekta - modern sans-serif collection
  11. basement grotesque
  12. Helmet - a neo-grotesque display typeface.
  13. Outfit Fonts - geometric sans
  14. Mohave Typefaces - Titling Display Fonts
  15. Aspekta - modern sans-serif collection
  16. Sprat - display typeface based on an alphabet by Eric Gill.
  17. Oxanium - a square, futuristic font family.
  18. Formera - Futura Renner
  19. Some Time Later - Font inspired by the title and time cards in the Nickelodeon cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants.
  20. Type With Pride - inspired by the Rainbow Flag

Popular Fonts for Coding

  1. Iosevka
  2. JetBrains Mono
  3. Monaspace
  4. Input
  5. Hack
  6. Berkeley Mono
  7. Intel One Mono
  8. Monocraft - Minecraft typeface
  9. Miracode Sharper Monocraft
  10. Commit Mono
  11. Comic Code
  12. Victor Mono
  13. MonoLisa
  14. mononoki
  15. 0xProto
  16. Agave

Free Typeface Catalogs from Foundries

  1. Fontshare by Indian Type Foundry. 100 fonts, 59 pairs.
  2. indestructible type* by Owen Earl. 7 typefaces.
  3. UNCUT.wtf 150 typefaces.
  4. Omnibus-Type 28 variable fonts.
  5. Open Foundry 31 variable fonts.
  6. The League Of Moveable Type 17 typefaces.
  7. Free Faces 77 typefaces.
  8. Collletttivo 12 typefaces.
  9. Brick 60 typefaces.
  10. The Velvetyne Type Foundry (VTF)
  11. Collletttivo 12 typefaces.
  12. Paratype 12 font families.

Font Aggregators

  1. Google Fonts font files on GitHub
  2. Fontsource 1695 families. NPM packages.
  3. Online Web Fonts - font files from websites
  4. Font Meme - Discover fonts used in popular culture.
  5. FontBolt - Generate your text from pop culture fonts.
  6. 1001 Free Fonts
  7. Abstract Fonts 10,000+ fonts.
  8. BeFonts
  9. CreativeTacos 3300 fonts
  10. DaFont 82,320 fonts.
  11. Dafont Free 14,265 fonts.
  12. Font.Download 200,000+ Free Fonts
  13. Font Library 1,366 fonts.
  14. Fontasy 1105 fonts
  15. FontCubes
  16. FontM
  17. FontPalace
  18. FontPark
  19. FontReach 2,700 fonts.
  20. FontRiver 60,000 fonts.
  21. Fontsly
  22. FontSpace
  23. FontSpring
  24. FontSquirrel
  25. FontStruct
  26. FontZone
  27. FreebiesBug
  28. Urban Fonts

Font Marketplaces

Typography Web Tools

  1. Beautiful Web Type 39 typefaces. Pairings, features.
  2. Identifont - Fonts by appearance, name, similarity, designer or publisher.
  3. NerdFonts - coding fonts with glyphs / icons patches.
  4. ProgrammingFonts - test drive 138 programming fonts
  5. Coding Font - find your favorite coding font
  6. Dev Fonts - List of fonts for coding
  7. TypeWar - Identify font game.
  8. Shape Type - Adjust letter shape game.
  9. Kern Type - a letter spacing / kerning game.
  10. Modern Font Stacks System font stack CSS organized by typeface classification for every modern OS
  11. System Font Stacks
  12. Wakamai Fondue - What can my font do?
  13. Golden Ratio Typography Calculator
  14. Typescale
  15. Modular Scale
  16. Archetype - Font pairing and size
  17. Fontjoy - Font pairing made simple
  18. FontPair
  19. WordMark - Compare multiple fonts in a visual grid.
  20. Typefaceoff for facing off typefaces.
  21. Font Library - Google fonts by tags
  22. GooFonts - Google fonts tagged

Influential Typefaces in Design

  1. BASKERVILLE Designed by John Baskerville, 1757
  2. BODONI Designed by Giambattista Bodoni, 1790s
  3. ADOBE CASLON Designed by Carol Twombly, 1990, based on pages printed by William Caslon, 1734-70
  4. CENTAUR Designed by Bruce Rogers, 1912-14. The italic, by Frederic Warde, is based on the fifteenth-century hand of Ludovico delgi Arrighi.
  5. CENTURY EXPANDED Designed by Morris Fuller Benton, 1900
  6. CLARENDON Named for the Clarendon Press, Oxford, who commissioned it in 1845
  7. HTF DIDOT Designed by Jonathan Hoefler, 1992, inspired by the types of Francois Ambroise Didot, 1784
  8. FEDRA SANS Designed by Peter Bilak, 2001, who was asked to create a "de-Prostestantized Univers"
  9. FILOSOFIA Designed by Zuzana Licko, 1996, a revival of the types of Bodoni
  10. FRUTIGER Designed by Adrian Frutiger, 1976
  11. FRANKLIN GOTHIC Designed by Morris Fuller Benton, 1904
  12. FUTURA Designed by Paul Renner, 1927, who sought an "honest expression of technical processes."
  13. GEORGIA Designed by Matthew Carter, 1996, for display on screen
  14. GILL SANS Designed by Eric Gill, 1928. It has been described as Britain's Helvetica.
  15. ADOBE GARAMOND Designed by Robert Slimbach, 1989, based on pages printed by Claude Garamond in the sixteenth century
  16. GOTHAM Designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, 2000, inspired by lettering found at Port Authority Bus Terminal, New York City
  17. HELVETICA Designed by Max Miedinger, 1957
  18. HOEFLER TEXT Designed by Jonathan Hoefler, c. 1995
  19. INTERSTATE Designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, 1993, inspired by U.S. highway signs
  20. ADOBE JENSON Designed by Robert Slimbach, 1995
  21. META Designed by Erik Spiekermann, 1991
  22. MRS EAVES Designed by Zuzana Licko, 1996, inspired by pages printed by John Baskerville
  23. NEUTRAFACE Designed by Christian Schwartz, House Industries, 2002, based on lettering created by the architect Richard Neutra in the 1940s and 1950s
  24. NOBEL Designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, 1993, based on 1929 types by the Dutch typographer Sjoerd Henrik de Roos. Frere-Jones describes Nobel as "Futura cooked in a dirty pan."
  25. NEWS GOTHIC Designed by Morris Fuller Benton, 1908
  26. QUADRAAT Designed by Fred Smeijers, 1992
  27. SABON Designed by Jan Tschichold, 1966, inspired by the sixteenth-century types of Claude Garamond
  28. SCALA Designed by Martin Majoor, 1991
  29. THESIS SERIF Designed by Lucas de Groot, 1994
  30. TRADE GOTHIC Designed by Jackson Burke, 1948-60, inspired by nineteenth-century grotesques
  31. UNIVERS Designed by Adrian Frutiger, 1957
  32. VERDANA Designed by Matthew Carter, 1996, for display on screen
  33. WALBAUM Designed by Justus Erich Walbaum, 1800

Source: Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton

Typography Glossary

  1. Grotesk: The common German name for sans serif faces, as opposed to “Antiqua” which means serif face.
  2. Antiqua: The common German and Scandinavian names for serif faces, The Scandinavian name is “Antikva”.
  3. Roman: Standard type style or regular weight of an upright typeface
  4. Diacritics: A diacritic is an ancillary mark or sign added to a letter. Accents are one type of diacritics.
  5. Dingbats: Decorative symbols and characters that are generally not included in a font or character set, including boxes, bullets, arrows, pointers, and other characters. Often made up into their own font.
  6. Oldstyle figures: Numbers that have different heights, some aligning to the baseline, some below. Oldstyle figures harmonize well with lowercase letters. Using oldstyle figures helps keep the numbers from standing out too much and disturbing the overall flow of the typography on the page. Oldstyle figures can be proportional or tabular.
  7. Lining figures (LF): Numbers that rest on the baseline, and are usually the same height as capital letters. Lining figures can be tabular or proportional.
  8. Font: particular size or style of a typeface, say 10 point regular or 24 point italic.
  9. Typeface: the specific design of the letters, say Times New Roman or Baskerville.
  10. Glyph: individual symbols of the typeface, say letter, number, punctuation mark, accented variations, etc.
  11. Baseline, Cap Line, x-Height
  12. Tracking is Letter-Spacing.
  13. Kerning is spacing between two specific letters, eg. LT, VA or To.
  14. Leading is Line-Spacing.
  15. Fixed-width is Monospaced.
  16. Italics is not same as Slanted or Oblique.
  17. Ink trap An ink trap is an intentional negative space built into the design of characters’ letterforms to literally trap ink at certain intersections of the strokes, where ink might pool or bleed and create an undesirable emboldening of the text. It is only needed for small point sizes and are usually only found on typefaces designed for printing on newsprint. But in modern typefaces often serve a more stylistic purpose rather than their traditional intent.
  18. Widows & orphans A widow is the one (or few) words that appears at the top of a new page. An orphan is a single word (or syllable) that sits at the bottom of a paragraph of text.
  19. Faux, fake, pseudo, or synthesized - When software attempts to emulate an italic style, bold (or other) weight, ordinals, or small caps in lieu of actual font files for those variants.

Anatomy of Type

Examples depend on the typeface, may not be present in this font.

  1. Aperture: partially enclosed, somewhat rounded negative space (n, c, C, s, S, e)
  2. Apex: in the capital ‘A’.
  3. Arm: A horizontal or upward, sloping stroke that does not connect. (r, E, F, T, V)
  4. Ascender: partially enclosed, somewhat rounded negative space (b, d, f, h, k)
  5. Axis / Stress: An imaginary line drawn from top to bottom of a glyph bisecting the upper and lower strokes is the axis.
  6. Ball / Teardrop Terminal (‘f’)
  7. Beak: decorative stroke at the end of the arm (More pronounced serifs of E, F)
  8. Bowl: The curved part of the character that encloses the circular or curved parts (or counter) (d,b,o,g,D,B)
  9. Counter: The open or negative space in a fully or partly closed area within a letter. Bowl + Aperture letters.
  10. Cross Stroke: (f/t)
  11. Crossbar: horizontal stroke across the middle of uppercase ‘A’ and ‘H’.
  12. Crotch: (V/W/Y) - where two strokes meet and form an interior angle.
  13. Descender: Any part in a lowercase letter that extends below the baseline (g, j, p, q, y, etc.)
  14. Double-storey: A double-storey ‘a’ or ‘g’ has two counters.
  15. Ear: Typically found on the lowercase double storey ‘g’, an ear is a finishing stroke usually on the upper right side of the bowl.
  16. Eye: Enclosed space in a lowercase ‘e’.
  17. Finial / Taper
  18. Flag: The horizontal stroke at the top of the numeral ‘5’.
  19. Gadzook: An embellishment that connects the letters in a ligature but is not originally part of either letter.
  20. Hook: of ‘f’,‘J’ and ‘j’.
  21. Leg: (‘K’, ‘k’ and ‘R’)
  22. Ligature: (‘fi’, ‘fl’, ‘ff’, ‘ffl’)
  23. Loop/Lobe: In some double-storey ‘g’
  24. Neck / Link: The link connecting the top and bottom bowls of some lowercase ‘g’.
  25. Overshoot is the part of a letterform that extends above or below the vertical dimensions of flatter glyphs.
  26. Shoulder: arm that is connected on both ends (‘h’, ‘m’, ‘n’)
  27. Spine: The main curve in ‘S’ and ‘s’.
  28. Spur: Small protruding part on uppercase ‘G’.
  29. Stem
  30. Swash: An elegant extension on a letter form, either a modification of an existing part or an added-on part.
  31. Tail: of an uppercase ‘Q’.
  32. Tittle: The dot on the ‘i’ and the ‘j’.
  33. Vertex: The point at the bottom (or top) of a character where two strokes meet, for example the ‘v’, ‘V’, ‘w’, ‘W’ etc.

Trivia

  • The name Noto is short for No Tofu, where tofu is a term often used to describe the little squares that show when a font is not supported by a computer.
  • The Coca-Cola Company’s first ever proprietary typeface, TCCC Unity, stands for The Coca-Cola Company.
  • Neutraface was inspired by Austrian-American architect Richard Neutra, nothing with being neutral.
  • The Doves Type was revived after searching the riverbed of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge.
  • The mimicry typeface Wonton font is also known as Chinese, chopstick, chop suey, or kung-fu font. Subtle!
  • The surviving matrices based on which Janson typeface is developed, may not be made by Anton Janson but by Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis.

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💝 Trivia about typefaces.

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