After anatomy of type, this article is part 2 of my introduction to typography series wherein I talk about typefaces, typestyles, font vs typeface, the five classic typefaces, and their characteristics.
Typefaces refers to the design of letters. The difference between typefaces is achieved via modification in shape of the letters, serifs, length of ascenders and descenders, weight, slope, width to name a few.
When we say Bodoni, Helvetica or Futura we are actually referring to a typeface.
Typestyle refers to simple variation in a typeface in terms of weight, width or the combination of weight and width of the letters. A few typestyle are as follows,
Roman, Italic, Thin, Light, Regular, Semibold, Bold, Extrabold, Condensed, Extended.
A few more typestyles include the combination of the above like light condensed or semibold thin to name a few. Although some typefaces are available in a variety of styles, the most common ones are roman, italic and bold.
Font refers to a particular typestyle in a typeface. While Futura is a typeface, Futura semibold is a font.
They have thick strokes and heavily bracketed serifs.
There is an increased contrast between the thin and thick strokes, where the serifs are more sculpted.
There is an extreme contrast between the thin and the thick strokes.
Also referred to as square serifs, the letterforms in this typeface have a very heavy serif and the contrast between the thin and thick strokes is minimal.
Letterforms in this typeface do not contain any serif.
If we take the letter o, and draw a line via the thin parts of the letter we can see the stress, which is an indication of the distribution of weight through the thin parts of the letter.
Similar typefaces can be identified based on the stroke weight, which is a degree of contrast between the thick and thin strokes of the letter.
Identical typefaces can be identified based on the serifs wherein variation occurs in terms of the weight and bracketing (the way in which the serif meets the vertical stroke of the letter).
When trying to identify a typeface, look at the individual characters that contain most of the design information like R, T, W, a, e, g, h, or o. These characters provide more visual clues than L, or i.
With this we come to the end of part 2 in the introduction to typography series. I hope you found the article to be of value to you. Have a great day.
