Glyphs can have different variations created for many reasons.
The most common ones are:

• for a specific context (e.g., case sensitive, where punctuation signs are better aligned when combined with capital letters);
• stylistic variant of a glyph (e.g., swashed alternates);
• localized variants.

In a digital file, the names of these variations are tagged with an Opentype feature code related to their specificity (parenleft.case, A.swsh, Ldot.locl, etc.) so they can be easily processed in applications supporting these features.

In many languages and scripts, some glyphs are a combination of others, such as accented letters: é is the pairing of e with the diacritic “acute” on top.

When designing fonts, instead of copy-pasting the contours of both e and the acute accent into é, the designer adds an anchor on the top of e and below the acute accent, where both should be connected or anchored to each other. Thus, both elements are “called” to form the character é, which becomes its components.

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 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.

In type design, Bézier curves are used to draw contours on digital applications with vectors drawn by placing points and handles. This technology allows us to rasterize digital shapes and keep their quality.

HISTORY

Bézier curve technology was developed by French mathematician and physicist Paul de Casteljau in 1959. Working at that time for the automobile brand Citroën, de Casteljau developed a mathematical formula to improve the design process of car bodies. French engineer Pierre Bézier used the same technology in 1962 for Renault (another automobile brand) to create shapes using digital tools. It wasn’t until 1985, when Citroën lifted its industrial secrecy clause, that de Casteljau could speak about his work and Pierre Bézier was able to publicly mention the origins of his own.

In 1982, Bézier curves were used by the American computer scientist John Warnock to develop a technology for describing and positioning digital shapes and contours for the company that he co-founded with Charles Geschke: Adobe Systems.

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There are two types of Bézier curves: cubic and quadratic.

A cubic Bézier curve section requires the positioning of four points (two points and two handles), creating three sections between each point. The overall shape resembles a cubic shape, hence the name. Postscript font formats use cubic curves.

Quadratic curves are formed by three points (two points and one control point) to create a curve, with two sections cut halfway through to determine where the curve turns to the other point. TrueType font formats use quadratic curves.

The bounding box is the rectangle enclosing a digital glyph.

Its width can vary from glyph to glyph, but the height of a bounding box covers the highest and lowest parts of the entire typeface.

In digital texts, the bounding box of a glyph is highlighted when some text or characters are selected.

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.

In applications and tools that can process texts, to capitalize (or to set in All-Caps) is to transform every selected lowercase letter into its capital variant.

By default, most punctuation signs and some characters are designed to be combined with lowercase letters because this is the most frequent situation.

When combined with capital letters, some of them need to be adjusted to be optically aligned with the capitals. These variants are required in a good typeface so the user can access enough tools for quality micro-typography. They are called case-sensitive alternates, usually attached with the extension “.case” and accessible or activated on applications supporting OpenType features.

A character set is a list of glyphs (letters, figures, symbols, ligatures, punctuations, etc.).

In digital fonts, character sets (also called encoding lists) contain the glyphs of a font with their individual names and Unicode references.

There are multiple character sets specific to various scripts or languages, as each contains the needed glyphs used by its respective language. Separated character sets per script or language allow a smaller and optimized file size.

A colophon (or imprint) is a suggestive list of information about the production of a work or project. It can range from names and roles of people involved, typefaces or brand and kind of paper used, manufacturer and location of production, to hosting domain for websites, and more.

A Variable Fonts is made of two or more master files, with compatible contours of all glyphs across all masters. For each glyph, compatibility consists of:

• having the same number of contours and points;
• contours that have the same direction with the exact position of the starting point;
• and are set in the same order.

That way, there can be a fluid transformation (called “interpolations”) between every master of the Variable Font.

Many shapes in digital font files are identically repeated in multiple glyphs. These can be turned into components. Components are parts designed that exist as individual glyphs (such as the diacritic “acute”) and can be borrowed to form other glyphs (like in é).

Using components instead of copy-pasting contours gives a better control of consistency and reduces the size of the final font file.

The contour is the line (or outline) shaping a glyph, in both digital type design and analog practice.

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

Diacritics are markers added to letters. They can be above, below, or attached to a letter. In most languages and scripts using diacritics, these bring to the letter a different sound than that of the letter by itself.

LATIN ALPHABET

The Latin script is used in a large number of languages. Most of them use diacritics to bring (sometimes very subtle) variations of sound to letters. The quality of the sound of a diacritic can be different from one language to another. An example with the cedilla ç, used in French, Portuguese, and Turkish. Other languages even use multiple diacritics combined together with the same letter (like in Vietnamese with ở).

ARABIC SCRIPT

In the Arabic script, letters have different pronunciations depending on which diacritic is attached to them (or not there), and the language in use.

CHINESE PINYIN

In Mainland China during the 1950s, a new phonetic transcription system was created to make Chinese learning easier: Pinyin, which borrows Latin alphabet letters combined with diacritics as tone markers.

DESIGN

When creating a typeface, diacritics are designed as individual glyphs and are then combined with letters as components in type design applications. They need to be:

• visually aligned to the same height with one another (for those placed in the same area);
• have consistent weight and color;
• placed in a position with the letter that feels “natural” for each language.

Digital typefaces are products distributed and sold like software: it is not the design itself that is sold, but a copy (a font) attached with an agreement to use it: its license.

When purchasing a license, a specific EULA (End User License Agreement) is attached, containing all the terms and conditions of use granted by the distributor, foundry or designer for each font.
Different EULAs and licensing terms can exist according to the politics and principles of each entity. It is always advised to contact the foundry or the distributor if there is any doubt or question related to the terms in the EULA, to be sure that the license and EULA are valid for the intended use.

In type design applications, the action of transforming design files (working files) into other formats that can be installed and used (font files) is called export.

The most common exported formats are .otf (OpenType), .ttf (TrueType) for print usage, and .woff or .woff2 (Web Open Font Format) for websites.

Variable Fonts technology allows users to navigate within or use multiple variations between two or more specific styles (called masters) with high precision and much smaller font files.

When we navigate between masters—in the design space—we are looking at interpolations. The contours and shapes are digitally interpreted from the masters’ data from the Variable Font. Some type design applications (or extensions) can generate previews of what the font can look like beyond the masters, what exists beyond the design space, called extrapolations.

In digital fonts, contours are designed by placing nodes and handles.
Placing them properly is very important to keep the shapes as designed when computers or printers rasterize them.
Besides that, making sure to place extreme points on a contour is just as important to avoid unexpected results.

Since the metal type printing era, a font was a set of lead pieces for a specific typeface in a particular style and size. For example, Times New Roman 10pts, Times New Roman Bold 16pts and Times New Roman Bold Italic 16pts are three different fonts of Times New Roman typeface.

The term ‘font’ comes from the French word fondre (meaning ‘to melt’), as characters were made by melting a lead mix poured into matrices to produce types in batches.

In the digital world, a font is now an independent font file of a typeface in a specific style. Another example: Helvetica Neue Light and Helvetica Neue Light Italic are two individual fonts.

There are multiple file formats for digital fonts. Each one is specifically designed for optimum use at different times and situations.

Today, the most popular formats are OpenType (.otf and/or .ttf) for fonts installed on desktop devices—used for printed material—, and WOFF or WOFF2 (.woff or .woff2) for fonts used in websites.

The terms ‘glyph’ and ‘character’ are often mixed up, but there is a linguistic difference between them: a glyph is a specific representation of a character. For example, the character A can be represented by both glyphs A and a.

In typography (or typesetting), a structure—called a grid—is designed on a page to place the elements, helping with the content’s organization and legibility.

Handles—also called Bézier Control Point (BCP for short) or off-curve points—are toggles placed by the designer to determine the curvature of a segment. Their length and relative position have rules to be followed to ensure the quality of a contour in any situation once the file is exported and used:

• both handles on the same side of the curve;
• about 1/3 of the length of the curved segment between the handle and its closest point;
• no intersection of handles of the same segment.

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.

Before high-resolution screens were available, those with lower resolutions required the use of font files that went through a hinting process.

Digital fonts are files with glyphs as vector contours shaped by the designer on type design applications. On lower-resolution screens, they are rendered by being adapted into bitmap fonts on pixel grids.
Hinting is about giving instructions to each pixel’s position in lower resolution situations, ensuring a rendering that is as close as possible to the original design.

A hypertext link is a part of digital text linked to another page or website.

It is often displayed underlined or highlighted in a different color or style.

Hyphenation is the management of word breaks (with a hyphen) wherever a word at the end of a line doesn’t fit. There are some rules about the usage of hyphenation, such as:

• position of the word-break in a word, which depends on the language and script;
• avoid it in capitalized words;
• avoid it in the last word of a paragraph or a column;
• avoid having more than three following lines with hyphens.

In typography and type design, an icon can be a pictogram (a stylized drawing of an object) or an ideogram (a drawing with a meaning).

Variable Font technology allows users to navigate within or use multiple variations between two or more specific styles (called masters) with high precision and much smaller font files. When we navigate between masters, we are looking at interpolations, which can be exported and used as individual font files, called instances.

Variable Fonts technology allows users to navigate within or use multiple variations between two or more specific styles (called masters) with high precision and much smaller font files.

When we navigate between masters, we are looking at interpolations. They are contours and shapes digitally interpreted from the data of two (or more) masters.

Setting the kerning, or defining the kerning values, is about adjusting the distance between pairs of glyphs if the space between them looks too loose, too tight, or if some parts overlap with each other with their default spacing.

Once a kerning value has been set for a pair of glyphs, those values can be repeated on every other pair with identical or similar shapes (e.g., V + A, W + A).
Kerning can be set even with already published fonts in most applications (useful in justified texts), but great typefaces usually have these already fixed.

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.

Back in the metal type printing era, some glyph combinations were used repeatedly as they often occurred in some languages. They needed to be modified to have a combination that looks evenly spaced like the rest of the text (such as f and i). Punch-cutters created one type with the letters connected together instead of using two individual ones, and are called ligatures.

The same principle has been kept in digital typefaces and ligatures exist as independent glyphs. OpenType features allow us to switch from two separated glyphs to their ligature variant thanks to the ligature alternate features (if they exist in the selected typeface).

Margins are the spaces around a composition block (left, right, top and bottom margins).

For a Variable Font file to work correctly, it requires a minimum of two font files called masters, in which the glyphs need to be designed with:

• the same number of nodes and anchors;
• the same number of contours;
• in the same order and the same direction; so that interpolations or instances in between the masters can be calculated and displayed properly.

Masters can set up various types of axes (or design ranges) such as weight, optical size, slant angle, etc.
When there are multiple axes in a Variable Font, it is a Multiple Masters font.

Digital fonts are files containing various categories of information for it to be fully functional, correctly installed and used on devices, called metadata.

There are information such as names of the designer(s), publisher or distributor, version number or export, its release date, copyright information, etc.

Variable Fonts technology allows users to navigate within or use multiple variations between two or more specific styles (called masters) with high precision and much smaller font files.

Whenever more than two masters are used—giving a more complex Variable Font file—it is considered as a Multiple Master font (or MM for short).

When drawing characters in type design applications, contours are created by positioning a succession of nodes (or points), just like vector contours in most design applications.

The points of a straight line are nodes. Those on curved segments are on-curve points. Handles with each on-curve point are off-curve points (also control points) to control the curvature of the segment.

Opentype features are found in digital fonts with an OpenType format.

For the same glyph, there can be multiple variations (or alternates) along with their default form, as options for stylistic alternative or functional improvement. OpenType features can be activated in apps supporting them or with code lines calling them on a website, if they exist in the selected typeface.

Some principal features are: case sensitive, swashes, various figure styles (old style, tabular, proportional, etc.), and small capitals (or Small Caps).

OpenType is a digital font file format created by Adobe and Microsoft in 1996. It was mainly developed for fonts to be on printed media and is still in constant evolution.
OpenType font files contain all the data of a typeface style in one single file, from the glyphs’ shapes and metrics, to additional stylistic sets known as OpenType features. It has also a higher glyph capacity than others font formats (up to 65,000 and more!).

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.

When designing characters in type design applications, the contours of two shapes can be overlapped on top of each other to form more complex shapes (letter E can be split into several segments) or to create a counter like in letter O, with a larger contour and smaller one inside.

These two effects are controlled by changing the contours’ relative direction.

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.

In web typography, padding is about setting a specific distance between the sides of an element and its borders, like margins inside it.

Digital contours of a typeface are shaped by a succession of points, forming a path of points.

When two contours are overlapped on top of each other, the path direction of the last contour (clockwise or counter-clockwise) in relation to the previous one will determine whether it appears as a counter-form or is ‘invisible’.

Placeholder text (or Lorem Ipsum) is a fake text used to test the aspect of a typeface or a typographic composition.

In typography, points are measurement units to describe the size of a typeface (for printed or digital media).

Several units have been created and used over the centuries and across the globe, from the Didot to Cicéro and to the Pica and many others. Today, the international standard unit name is the (typographic) point. Font sizes are referred to as point sizes and indicated as pts.

Postscript is a computing language created by Adobe in 1982. It allowed the development of digital publishing (or DTP for Desktop Publishing) by printing images and texts on high-resolution laser printers.

Before Postscript fonts were used as Bitmap fonts, made out of pixels, with more or less resemblance to the designs depending on the size of the output (printed, or on high or low-resolution screens). Since Postscripts fonts were introduced (which contained font data as scalable outlines), fonts could be rendered as shapes much closer to the original designs, even at small sizes. Postscript fonts contained several files (glyph shapes and metrics, one to be displayed on screen and one to be read by the printer) for one font, and all needed to be installed to use them.

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.

A side bearing is the distance between a glyph’s side and its bounding box. In scripts written horizontally, there is always a left side bearing (LSB) and a right side bearing (RSB). Managing the side bearing values is working on the spacing of 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.

The skeleton is the center line around which every part of a glyph is built (weight, contrast, curvature, terminals, etc.). Keeping the skeleton the same across multiple styles of one typeface family is, by definition, keeping the same structure, which is one of the principal ways to maintain design consistency.

Spacing is about managing the values of a glyph’s side bearings (or the distance between its most left and right side edge to the side of the bounding box), which influences the distance between each glyph combination.

Good spacing is just as important as the design of glyphs themselves, as the combination of both influences the quality of a typeface.

A specimen is a visual sample document published by type foundries that showcases a typeface, its glyph set, text settings in different sizes, Opentype features, etc.
A collection of specimens of different typefaces bound together is called a typeface catalog.

Static fonts are independent font files with data of a typeface in a particular and single style, as opposed to Variable Fonts, which contain data of indefinite styles.

Whenever a file contains text using a font that isn’t installed on the user’s device, the system will replace it with another one as a fallback solution. It is a font substitution.

In most text processing tools, it is possible to apply a different style (Bold, Italic, Underlined, or Strike-through).

When those styles don’t exist already in the selected typeface, the system can “automatically” generate a similar effect even if it hasn’t been designed (this is not recommended, but can be handy if needed).

What is created in such a situation is called a synthetic font.

Digital devices need to always have fonts installed in its system, called system fonts, to be able to display textual information on its screen.

Every device manufacturer and/or seller has its own library of system fonts, which support (in the best situations) every script that is eventually used.

A template serves as a model for typography and typesetting. Like a reference guideline, it helps with the composition of the elements in a page (images, texts, spaces, grids, etc.), printed or on screen, to create a coherent and consistent document with specific design characteristics.

Suppose a text uses a script that is not supported by any font available in a device’s system or contains one or more glyphs that don’t exist in any fonts that are already installed. In that case, the reader will see the “unrecognized” glyph replaced by a tofu.
They are generally displayed as rectangles filled with a cross.

Fonts have spacing values for all glyphs that are defined by its designer.
If glyphs are too loose or too close to the needs (or taste) of the user, the spacing can be modified in most application tools for texts. It is called “to adjust the tracking.”

Most type foundries and other font distributors offer today the possibility to get a trial of a typeface, which allows the user to try it for free before deciding to buy its license or not. Their conditions of usage are limited to trying the typeface only, listed in a specific trial EULA. In general, foundries share their trials with a limited amount of glyphs and/or features, enough to give an idea of how the typeface looks in a given situation.

TrueType is a digital font file format created by Apple in the 1990s, used for fonts installed on Mac OS and Microsoft Windows systems. It was developed a few years after the Postscript format was introduced by Adobe. TrueType is based on quadratic curves that are processed, calculated and rendered faster than the cubic curves used by Postscript format. Unlike Postscript fonts, which require the installation of every file one font may contain, installing a single TrueType font is enough to be able to use it.

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.

Unicode is an international coding norm to identify signs and symbols used in digital devices worldwide.

Created by a non-profit organization called the Unicode Standard Consortium with a team of international members, the Unicode attributes a code to each glyph of any written language. These codes are integrated into the systems of digital devices to ensure a stable information exchange.

Measuring the sizes of fonts is made with a specific type of unit called points or pts.

Multiple types of units with various sizes and names have been used over the years and across the globe, from the Didot, Cicéro and Pica points to inches (and these are for Latin script only).

In type design, the width and/or spacing values of a glyph change depending on the weight of the style to ensure a visual balance. However, some typefaces are designed as uniwidth (also called multiplexed), which means that the same glyph keeps the same width across all weights and styles of the family.

This feature facilitates digital typesetting, especially when there is an interaction between the user/viewer and the text on a digital screen. For example, words or parts of text can switch to a different style without modifying the typesetting of the block while hovering or clicking.

DESCRIPTION

A Variable Font file contains data of an entire typeface family and allows an unlimited amount of style variations defined by the designer.

HISTORY

Variable Fonts started with a technology created by Apple (TrueType GX for QuickDraw GX), from which Adobe, Google, and Microsoft joined in to develop it into OpenType Variable Fonts, announced in 2016. Today, Variable fonts are the go-to font format (for typefaces available in such format) for digital media, especially when there are animated texts.

BENEFITS

Unlike static fonts (in which one font file contains the data of a single style), one Variable Font file contains as many variations as possible between two or more master files of a typeface. Rather than searching for the right file for the right style within a typeface family, the user can install one Variable Font file of a typeface, adjust the style to what is desired and have the design application automatically generate the result or have an optimized variation to the environment whenever it changes (responsive to the screen format).

Vectors are digital contours drawn using vector graphics based on Bézier curve technology.

Type design applications rely on the same technology to create the shapes of glyphs.

Web fonts are font files used in websites. There are specific formats supported by web browsers, in which the web fonts are loaded as part of the website’s content.

Today, the most common web font formats are WOFF (for Web Open Font Format, extension: .woff) and WOFF2 (.woff2).

WOFF and WOFF2 are two font formats that are compressed and specifically created for the web. In terms of size, they are much smaller than TrueType or OpenType font files, allowing a much faster loading speed. WOFF has been used since 2009, and is supported by most web browsers such as Mozilla’s Firefox.

WOFF2 (or WOFF 2.0) was created in 2022, supported by more browsers like Google’s Chrome.

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.