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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Companies, brands, institutions and so on can find great benefits in using and/or owning a custom-made typeface with a design that fits their voice. Unlike retail typefaces, they can be used as an important and exclusive element of the visual identity and be fully suited to their needs.

A custom typeface costs more at first than a license of an existing retail one (the client can have a design for their exclusive use instead of a retail design that may be used by many others). Still, it can be financially and strategically more interesting, and profitable than licensing retail typefaces in the long run. The pros and cons between these choices are worth the effort of comparison and evaluation.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

A manuscript is a document with texts written by hand.

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.

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.

Latin letters a and g can be represented with two different constructions:

• single storey, for modern and/or geometric styles;
• double storey, for traditional and/or classical styles.

In some typefaces, both constructions are available, as designers feel that some users prefer one over the other.

The letter g can also be designed with a half storey construction, often seen in Scandinavian designs as a legacy from Danish street signs.

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).

Tabular figures are the same height as the capital letters and are designed to fit in the same width frame, making them suitable to be used in tables, this helps identify the numbers more easily and clearly.

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.

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.

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.