To name and describe parts of letters and other characters, many terms are borrowed from architecture (e.g. arch of an n) or from human and animal anatomy (e.g. leg of an R), which is why we are speaking of “type design anatomy.”

The angle (or slant) is what we can observe on italic-style letterforms. We say the vertical stems are stretched and lean to the right at a certain angle.

In the same typeface family, the degree of the italic angle changes from one weight to another. Usually, italic stems are more upright as the weight gets bolder. That degree can also differ from one glyph to another in the same weight.

The aperture is the frontier between the counter and the surrounding white space of opened letters (such as a, e or c).

A larger aperture increases the legibility of a typeface and is highly recommended for text typefaces.

The apex is the point on the top of a letter where two stems meet, such as the top of the letter A or the middle of w.

Many terms are borrowed from architecture or from human and animal anatomy to designate and describe parts of letters and other characters. We are even speaking of type design anatomy.

In Latin script, the arch is the top-right part of letters such as n, m, h and a.

Many terms are borrowed from architecture or human and animal anatomy to designate and describe parts of letters and other characters. We are even speaking of type design anatomy.

In Latin script, the arm is the horizontal bar at the top of the letter T.

The parts of lowercase letters that go above the x-height level (such as b, d or h) are called ascenders.

On the opposite side of the x-height, the parts going below the baseline are descenders.

Both don’t necessarily need to have the same length. In general, descenders are shorter than ascenders.

Attention: do not confuse it with the capital height (or cap height).

In Latin script, we speak of a “diagonal,” “tilted” or “oblique” axis when we refer to the shapes of letters in a typeface that have some contrast.

In calligraphy (when using a broad nib pen), the axis of the stroke is defined by the angle at which the pen is held, from which a contrast between thin and thick parts is formed. The axis should be kept the same (or very similar) for a consistent construction on all glyphs.

In Variable Fonts, the axis refers to the area where variations of a typeface can be made between styles, called “masters.” For an axis to be functional, it needs:

• two masters minimum at its extremes;
• compatible contours of every related glyph.

There can be a weight axis (e.g., from a Light to a Bold master), a width axis (e.g., from a Condensed to an Extended master), or many more!

The user can choose precisely which variation is needed by navigating through the axis.

The concept of balance is fundamental in typeface design. With many different shapes (letters, figures, symbols, etc.) that have to be combined to create a more complex group (words, sentences), a certain level of training and expertise is required to achieve a harmonious balance of the whole set.

A good balance allows a comfortable reading experience.

The baseline is where the bottom extremity of letters such as n and H are positioned, and it is used as a reference guide for the entire character set. We also say that letters are “sitting” on the baseline.

The baseline—with other guidelines like x-height, ascender, descender and capital height—helps to control the position of all letters and glyphs.

Also called body copy or running text, body text is usually the main written part of a document. Titles, subtitles, captions and others should be visually different from the body text so each type of information is clearly distinct and recognizable.

It is advised to set the body text at a size that is most comfortable for long reading: from 9 to 12 points for printed media and 16 to 18 points for digital screens.

While Regular is the most common weight for body text, Bold is a style often chosen to highlight a word or a sentence with a stronger emphasis than Italic.

Many terms are borrowed from architecture or human and animal anatomy to designate and describe parts of letters and other characters. We are even speaking of type design anatomy.

In the Latin script, the bowl is the rounded parts of letters like a, B, P, R, etc.

The word calligraphy comes from the Greek kalos, meaning “beautiful,” and graphein, meaning “to write.” Together, it means “to write beautifully.”

Many civilizations around the world have practiced calligraphy (and continue to do so today) using a variety of tools: brush, pen, quill, broad nib pen or brush, etc. Most even consider it to be an art form.

Today, we tend to describe a calligraphic style typeface when it is inspired by letters and characters written with a calligraphy tool, following certain calligraphy styles. However, it is slightly different from “script” or “handwritten” styles, as these refer to handwritten shapes which are free from any particular calligraphic style.

The cap height (short for capital height) is at the top level of square capital letters, such as H.

The cap height is usually lower than the ascender height and is one of the main guidelines for Latin typefaces.

To inform a reader that a passage of text is a caption, it is usually placed near the image it is linked to, but it is usually also set in a smaller size and/or in a different style.

Some typefaces contain a specific caption style in the family with optimized details for specific use in small sizes, such as lower contrast and higher x-height.

In the Chinese Hanzi script, the center space (or optical core, 中宫 in Chinese) corresponds to the central area of a character, similar in Latin to the area between the x-height and the baseline. This area can differ from style to style, but it has to be visually constant for all characters in a typeface.

A text typeface with a bigger center space has its legibility improved for small sizes.

With the many styles and designs of typefaces that exist, it can be difficult to describe, sort, or even find them in a catalog that isn’t familiar to the user.

Each writing system has its own typeface classification categories that best suit its nature and history. As aesthetic values differ from one culture to another, the same (or similar) style may not convey the same impression across different scripts, and one category considered a convention for one script is not always relevant to others.

For example, Latin typefaces have been sorted into multiple classification systems since the beginning of metal typesetting. Here are some of them:

• Thibaudeau, by French typographer Francis Thibaudeau in 1921, with four categories: Elzévirs, Didots, Égyptiennes and Antiques;
• Vox (or Vox-Thibaudeau), by French historian Maximilien Vox in 1954, who started with the Thibaudeau classification as a basis and added more to include in the additional styles from the typefaces from Deberny & Peignot type foundry’s library;
• Vox-ATypI, with additional categories and subcategories by the ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) from 1962 to 2021.

Today, classification systems vary from one type foundry to another, using more or less “standardized” terms better suited to their own catalog or the scripts covered. These boxes also help users find what they are looking for in a wide variety of choices. They are not rules to be followed to the letter. Imagination and creativity shouldn’t be confined!

The color of a text is the quality of its visual texture given by the design of the typeface in use.

Different settings such as spacing, leading, frequency of some letters or diacritics can also influence the typographic color.

Letters, characters and other glyphs of every script are written with a specific number of strokes of a particular shape. This is the glyph construction.

This construction went through multiple evolutions over time and at different pace for each script, being influenced by various circumstances (tools in use, style preferences, needs, etc.).

The contrast is the relationship between a glyph’s thick and thin parts.

The thickness variation in a stroke comes originally from handwriting, as a result of the tool’s reaction to the medium in combination with how it is held and the writer’s movements.
Nowadays, in Latin type design, we speak of a vertical contrast when the vertical parts are thicker than the horizontal ones, it is its “natural” contrast. And the opposite is known as a reversed or inverted contrast.

But these concepts only apply to scripts that evolved using tools and a medium that creates such contrast “naturally”, which is not universal for all. For example, the Hebrew script’s contrast would naturally be distributed the other way around.

A counter (or counterform) is the negative shape inside a glyph with an enclosed form, either entirely closed (such as b) or partially open (such as n).

This term comes from the counterpunch used for punching the inside white space of a letterform in metal type punch. They were cut before the outer shape, and reused to make types of every related letter, to keep a consistent look on the entire font.

The parts of lowercase letters going below the baseline (such as p, q or y) are called descenders. In the same typeface, all descenders need to have the same height for overall consistency.

On the opposite side, parts going above the x-height are ascenders, like in letters b, d or f.

Both ascenders and descenders don’t necessarily need to have the same length. In general, descenders are shorter than ascender

Display (or Titling) typefaces are designed and used at large sizes to catch the reader’s attention (in posters, billboards, newspaper or magazine titles, covers, etc.).

In order to do so, they have more elaborate designs and/or exaggerated details than typefaces for running text.

Many terms are borrowed from architecture or human and animal anatomy to designate and describe parts of letters and other characters. We are even speaking of type design anatomy.

For Latin script, the drop refers to the top hanging part of r or a that looks like a drop falling downward, generally present in serif style fonts.

Many terms are borrowed from architecture or human and animal anatomy to designate and describe parts of letters and other characters. We are even speaking of type design anatomy.

In the Latin script, the ear refers to the top-right hanging part of the letters like r, f or the double storey g.

Expansion is one of the multiple contrast types of Latin type design (along with translation and rotation).

The specificities of the expansion contrast come from the pressure applied while writing a stroke with a fountain pen or quill (the two flexible tips split with added pressure), while keeping a vertical axis of the pen tip.

Bodoni and Didone (or Didot) styles are typical examples of expansion contrast typefaces.

To designate and describe parts of letters and other characters, many terms are borrowed from architecture or from human and animal anatomy. We are even speaking of type design anatomy.

In Latin type design, the eye refers to the ratio between the x-height and the other guidelines (ascenders and descenders).

A typeface is suited for text usage if it has a ratio slightly bigger between its eye to its ascenders and descenders, as this enhances the legibility of the letters.

A typeface family is a group of typefaces with common characteristics (just like in a family of people); even if each style has its own specificities (weight, width, contrast, etc.), so do the other family member.

A family usually contains a limited number of styles, such as weights (Light, Regular and Bold), and their matching Italics. With a larger number of styles (often ten or more), it can be called a ‘superfamily’.

A typeface with a geometric style has shapes designed in a way that follows the logic of geometry (straight, round, square, etc.).

But our human eyes are organic (as opposed to artificial), we need to use optical tweaks and adjustments in addition to the shapes drawn out of geometric tools to make the letterforms look geometric.

The word ‘handwriting’ refers to texts written by hand.

For each category of glyphs in a character set (caps, lowercase, smallcaps, etc.), the designer uses specific height levels as guidelines. They help maintain the consistency of the shapes and the positioning of the various elements for every glyph throughout the typeface.

Many terms are borrowed from architecture or human and animal anatomy to designate and describe parts of letters and other characters. We are even speaking of type design anatomy.

In the Latin script, the hook refers to the part curling downward in letters such as c, f, r, s, etc.

Depending on the style or the shape of this part, it can also be called an ear, an arch or a (upper) terminal.

When printing technology was primarily based on printing inked metal types on paper, ink could easily spread in the small corners of the characters (in printing, this effect is called bleed), especially at small sizes, weakening their legibility.

One of the best examples of a typeface solving that problem is Bell Centennial, designed by Matthew Carter in 1975 for the US telephone company AT&T which needed a typeface for their phone books (printed on a thin and porous paper). This typeface has inner corners to go into the letterforms’ usual contours, called ink traps.

In digital typeface design, designers still use ink traps, especially for typefaces intended for small sizes (on printed and/or digital media), but also as design features (which can go pretty wild!).

DESCRIPTION

Two construction styles are possible for the same weight in a Latin script typeface: Roman (or upright) and Italic. Italics have slanted letterforms, with more or less obvious influence from handwritten letter structure (connected letters) and shapes (softer starts and endings). In general, italic letters also have a slightly narrower width than their Roman companion.

For italic styles to be visually linked to the roman version, they have to be related to each other (similar weight, height, etc.). However, they also need to be different enough so the reader can easily identify one from the other. Managing a good balance between differentiation and similarity is part of the typeface designer’s expertise to design a “nice couple”.

HISTORY

The use of roman and italic styles as we do today started with the early printers of the 15th century, who used both styles for various applications to convey different impressions (emphasis, comments, etc.). During the Renaissance in Europe, when the Humanist movement came into popularity, revivals of handwritten calligraphic styles such as Carolingian Minuscule (all lowercase letters) and Roman capital letters carved on monuments (Capitalis Monumentalis) became most prominent due to their close relationship with ‘natural’ movements from the human hand.
While both roman (upright, interrupted) and italic (slanted, connected) styles were being used, the differentiation between them increased and ended up becoming two independent styles used for different purposes, which we are familiar with today. They also got their different names since that era, with ’Roman’ for the Roman alphabet which the handwriting takes inspiration from first, and ‘Italic’ came from the English writers who named the style of connected letters after the area where they knew it came from.

USE IN TYPOGRAPHY

Italic styles are mainly used in texts as a functional companion to the Roman in a typeface family. They are used when a part of a sentence or word needs to be emphasized from the rest, as with work titles, words in a different language, or words that need to be highlighted.

Not every writing system uses or even has Italic styles like in the Latin script. Instead, other scripts use different ways to achieve the same purpose of emphasis (use a different weight or specific punctuation).

Many terms are borrowed from architecture or human and animal anatomy to designate and describe parts of letters and other characters. We are even speaking of type design anatomy.

In Latin script, the leg is the lower diagonal stroke of letters like R, k or K.

A lettering is a drawing of a group of characters made for a specific situation (such as on a shop sign) or for a piece of work (a brand’s logo, a title for a magazine insert, etc.), unlike a typeface where each and every glyph is individually designed in a way to work in all kinds of combinations.

A typeface style with a lighter (thinner) weight than the Regular can be called “Light.”

It is one of the most common weights in Latin typefaces (along with Regular and Bold). However, many other terms exist for weight styles on the Design Space spectrum, such as Thin, Book, ExtraLight or Hairline.

DESCRIPTION

Oldstyle figures are designed to fit with the design of lowercase characters.
They are more often used in texts as they visually blend in better than the other figure variants.

HISTORY

The proportions of oldstyle figures are closely related to how they were written in calligraphy using similar strokes and movements as those of the (lowercase) letters.

EVOLUTION

Oldstyle figures are also called ‘traditional’ figures in some languages, as more modern styles came later on (hence the name identification) as better adapted forms to specific situations: tabular, lining or proportional figures.
In digital typefaces, several style sets of figures are available and can be accessed via the alternate sets.

The shapes used to form the words and texts we read are seen by our eyes. And our eyes and brain are organs that don’t rely on geometry, rulers, and compasses to ‘read’ the world.

Even if they are geometrically aligned, some shapes may look uneven and need to be optically adjusted to appear consistent. In type design, we talk about optical corrections.

When a typeface is intended to be used at some specific sizes only (large on billboards or small in printed books), some details can be optimized for each situation, resulting in optical size styles such as Text, Caption, Titling, or Display.

For text styles, aspects such as lower contrast and simpler details have been proven more efficient for reading small texts (especially if they are printed on rough surfaces), while display styles can carry elaborate details as they are seen in larger sizes.

Odd situations can happen when typesetting a text making its overall appearance look sloppy.

When the first line of a paragraph appears alone at the end of a column or a page, it is called an orphan.

The overshoot of a glyph is the part that goes slightly beyond the height of its fellow letters to achieve an optical evenness, such as rounded letters compared to square ones.

See Optical Corrections for more details.

To test the quality of a typeface, the designer uses proofs. They are documents using the typeface in many situations: set at various sizes, different glyph combinations, languages, paragraph length, etc.), just like in the printing industry, and check out how it looks and/or make more targeted corrections.

Regular weight is the most frequently used style in a typeface family.
With its proportions and features designed to be easily read, it is the best style to be used in running texts.

The contrast is the relationship between a glyph’s thick and thin parts.

The thickness variation in a stroke comes originally from handwriting, as a result of the tool’s reaction to the medium in combination with how it is held and the writer’s movements.
Nowadays, in Latin type design, we speak of a vertical contrast when the vertical parts are thicker than the horizontal ones, it is its “natural” contrast. And the opposite is known as a reversed or inverted contrast.

But these concepts only apply to scripts that evolved using tools and a medium that creates such contrast “naturally”, which is not universal for all. For example, the Hebrew script’s contrast would naturally be distributed the other way around.

A revival is a (digital) typeface which takes its designs from an existing one (most often a printing typeface: metal, wood, or photocomposition).

Inevitably, the design of a revival contains unique details of the designer, from interpretations of the initial design while analyzing printed results on paper to those on screen at various resolutions. Today, we can see multiple typefaces designed as revivals from one and the same typeface, but each have (sometimes very subtle) differences. For example, we can think of the many versions of the Garamond.

A revival from a running text typeface is considered as a good assignment for students starting to learn typeface design, as this allows to get more familiar with styles considered as “conventional” before experimenting further with more creativity.

DESCRIPTION

Sans serif, or Sans (literally meaning without in French), describes a typeface style without serifs.

HISTORY

As far as we know, the first published sans serif typeface, Two-Lines English Egyptian by William Caslon IV, was published in 1816 in London, England.
Many terms have been used to speak of a sans style as we understand it today, with multiple categories names in different typographic classification systems of Europe: ‘grotesque’ (France and United Kingdom), ‘Grotesk’ (Germany), ‘gothic’ (USA), ‘linéale’, ‘bâton’ or ‘antique’ (France).

EVOLUTION

In Europe and North America, Sans-serif styles became popular in the early 20th century as part of a modern trend. Typeface designers experimented a lot around the this style, with some becoming references, and later style sub-categories of Sans-serif: humanistic sans, geometric sans, grotesque or gothic, etc.

But these don’t apply to other scripts that evolved on an independent path from the ‘Latin’ world. Chinese Hanzi have a category of style similar to Sans, called Heiti (or Hei), that doesn’t have as many sub-categories.

DESCRIPTION

Script is a category of typefaces that imitates handwritten forms.

HISTORY

Various categories of typeface styles started to be identified from the various metal typefaces being produced for movable type printing. Metal type technology worked so that each piece of metal representing one character could be assembled and reassembled in every possible combination, meaning that each character was designed as a disconnected form.

As new typeface designs kept being produced (mainly in Europe), more flourished styles for more diverse choices started to appear, especially during the early 20th century. Not only did they give more possibilities for typesetters (for advertisements or novelty), but new typefaces were also a way for type foundries to display their capabilities in technical and design innovation. Beyond italic styles, typefaces that could imitate handwritten forms (with connected and/or irregular forms) were one of the most challenging styles at that time, technologically speaking. As one (early but not the earliest) example of such a challenge, we have the typeface Mistral, designed by French typeface and advertiser designer Roger Excoffon in 1953 for Fonderie Olive.

EVOLUTION

Thanks to the possibilities offered by digital fonts, which have far fewer physical constraints than metal types, the same glyph can have multiple variations and replace one glyph to a more fitting one (see Opentype features or Alternates), to create the impression of handwritten words. Today, there is a wide choice of Script style typefaces, with a high variety of styles (and qualities).

IMPRESSION

Script typefaces are mainly used as display styles, in titles, short texts, or even in brand logos.
They can convey all kinds of impressions from the many possibilities of ‘sub-styles’. Note: script typefaces are not to be confused with lettering!

DESCRIPTION

Serifs are elements at the tips of strokes in serif style typefaces.

HISTORY

The origin and evolution of serifs differ in different scripts and don’t even exist in others.
For the Latin script, serifs come from the combination of the movements of the brush when writing Roman capital letters (the origins of the Latin alphabet) and stone carving techniques.

EVOLUTION

Calligraphy, metal and wood type printing, photo composition, typewriters, digital typefaces, all of these tools and techniques contributed various shapes and presence (or absence) or serifs among the various typeface styles that we see today.

The positioning of serifs in each letter has been defined by the writing ductus combined with the tools use. For example, the general rule is that serifs should be on both sides at the top and bottom of vertical stems for upright letters, and none on the bottom of italic stems.

There are multiple possibilities for the shapes of serifs: thin, thick, long, short, wedged, squared, triangular, etc. Many typeface styles have a particular serif shape as part of their characteristics.

IMPRESSION

In Latin script, different impressions and feelings are associated with specific typeface styles (traditional, luxurious, casual, elegant, etc.), which are mainly due to the circumstances of their creation, usage preferences, and habits.
For example, humanist or transitional serifs are the go-to styles for long reading uses.

DESIGN

For styles where serifs are on both sides of the stems, some asymmetrical letters (such as f, r, F or P) have a large opened counter on one side. To compensate for the imbalance created by the “empty space”, the designer can adjust the serif on that side by making it longer.

Letters, characters, and other glyphs are written with strokes. Their shapes and writing direction come from how they were traced by hand with the many tools humanity used for writing.

Every glyph of every writing system follows a specific structure for its parts (positioning of the strokes in relation to each other). People reading words and texts in a given script would recognize the glyphs (letters, characters, symbols, etc.) if their structure follows a convention that is familiar to all of users.

Due to the evolution of each script, the structure can change over time (e.g., Fraktur styles), or have multiple variants (e.g., single and double storey a).

In any writing system, typefaces exist in an infinite number and variety of styles. They are influenced by many factors, such as technology, tools, necessity, and trends. But some of them are (or can be) grouped into categories for their similarities, into classification systems (sans serif, serif, humanist or geometric, etc.).

In the Latin script, we also identify Roman (or upright) and Italic as two ‘companion’ styles of the same typeface style.

Swashes are the elongated extensions of letters, designed with longer strokes than their “usual” construction, most generally as a decorative feature and/or in display style typefaces.

HISTORY

They appeared during the metal type era in the Latin world, when swashed letters served as decorative features to the text. They were also a way to showcase the punch-cutters’ skills, sometimes with incredibly long and elaborate swashes.
Swashes still have the same purpose today in digital typefaces, where “normal” letters are the default ones and swashes can be activated as alternates from the typefaces’ features (if available).

The thickest part(s) of a glyph is called the thick. The opposite is the thin, and the relation between thick and thin is called the contrast.

The thinnest part(s) of a glyph is called the thin. The opposite is the thick, and the relation between thick and thin is called the contrast.

A typeface is a set of glyphs designed with a particular intention (and/or style).

A typeface family can gather multiple styles with their individual particularity (weight, width, contrast, etc.) but keep common traits specific to the same group.

Not to confuse with font or typography.

Typeface Design (or type design for short) is the practice of designing typefaces.

It is about designing every part and aspect of a typeface, from drawing the shapes of the glyphs (letters, characters, figures, symbols, and so on) to setting the specifications such as spacing, kerning, and hinting. The person doing type design is called a type designer.

Not to be confused with typography.

Typography (or typesetting) is the practice of assembling text elements in a design composition by defining multiple aspects such as the ratio between text columns and white spaces, choosing and using typefaces, setting their styles and sizes for all categories of texts, leading, justification style, and hyphenation, etc.

The person practicing typography is called a typographer.

Not to be confused with Typeface Design.

A typeface can have various degrees of stroke thickness which has to be consistent across the glyphs of the same font style. It is the font’s weight.

The few centuries of typeface development, mainly in the Latin world, brought us a standardized naming for weight values. They serve more as a way to identify each style within a typeface family rather than being a standard to follow, as styles descriptions are different from one culture to another.

In web design, each weight has a specific CSS code.

A white space is any part of a glyph that is not of the glyph itself. They can be counters (inside), spaces, or negative space (outside).

Other than the width of individual glyphs and characters (the letter M is usually wider than I), there are also various widths for typeface styles that participate in its personality or help make a content set in a specific width to fit specific conditions.

Some common width styles are: Narrow, Condensed, Regular, Extended and Wide. They serve more as a way to identify each style within a typeface family, rather than standards to follow for all scripts, as they can be different from one script to another.

The x-height is the guideline placed at the top of the Latin letter x.

It helps to align the other lowercase letters and to set the proportions with uppercase letters and the ascenders.

Because the letter x is the only lowercase letter without ascenders and horizontal tips at its top and bottom (it has no overshoots), it is the reference letter for lowercase height.