Choose the right font and font combinations for your website with the help of this comprehensive guide. Use the term font when you a referring to one particular alphabet of size and style of a typeface.Typography says a lot about your online brand. To summarise, use the term typeface for identification purposes and when you are discussing look or style. However, I think it’s always nice to preserve a little bit of history, so when you can try and use the terms correctly. Especially when using and selecting fonts within software. Well, you’re not going to be outcast from the typographic community if you happen to use the terms incorrectly. Does it Really Matter if a Say Typeface or Font? I guess maybe this is to do with being able to select both the typeface and font style from the same menu? Maybe I’m clutching at straws here!Īs you can see, things aren’t so black and white when trying to determine whether to refer to typeface or font within a software program. Why have Adobe decided to use the term font family and not typeface? So you may refer to a typeface as having a large family if it contains lots of different styles. For example, Helvetica Regular, Helvetica Italic, Helvetica Bold, Helvetica Condensed etc. The same can be seen within the New Paragraph Style box with InDesign.Ī font family refers to all the different styles within a single typeface. One thing to take note of is the terminology used on the tool tip when hovering over the font (or is that typeface?) name in Illustrator. This makes sense as you are always only selecting a single alphabet of one size and style at any given time. Referring to any of the Adobe applications such as InDesign, Photoshop or Illustrator the terminology used is font. When using software things can get a little more confusing… “You need to change the font to bold so it stands out more” So How Does This Apply When Using Software? “You need to make the font larger as I cannot read it” “Change the font to Garamond, 14pt, italic” Therefore, a font is one alphabet of a particular size and style of a Typeface. ![]() Each one of these draws (type cases) contains a single font. For example, one draw (type case) of would contain Helvetica 12pt regular and another may contain Helvetica 12pt Bold. It has a special organizational system and houses both the upper and lower cases of one size and style of a typeface. The type case is a single draw within the type cabinet. “Erik Spiekermann is one of my favourite typeface designers”. “Times New Roman is a serif typeface and was designed for the British newspaper The Times” “ITC Officina Sans is one of my favourite typefaces” When speaking, you might use the term typeface like this: Typefaces may be called after their designer such as Baskerville or Garamond a country such as Egyptian or just a name like Myriad. ![]() Therefore, a typeface refers to the design or look of alphabet and is used for identification purposes. For example, a type cabinet for Helvetica would contain multiple alphabets of metal characters of varying sizes and weights with each stored in their own draw (type case). Obviously, there needed to be some sort of organizational system which would enable the typesetter to find the required characters, so the type cabinets contained a number of compartmentalized draws called type cases.Įach type cabinet would house a single typeface. The Type CabinetĪs you could imagine, there were thousands of these metal characters and they were stored in large wooden cabinets. It is where these metal characters were stored that hold the answer to the typeface vs font debate. ![]() Yes, page layout was a very time consuming process in those days! Back in the day, type was set manually by placing re-usable metal characters into a chase (which is basically a frame), ink was applied to the letters and then this was pressed onto paper to produce the finished printed piece. A Trip Back in TimeĪs with most typography terminology it originates from the pre-digital world of analogue typesetting. Then I’ll explain how these terms are used in todays context and how they are used in popular software programs like the Adobe Creative Suite. ![]() To gain an understanding of where these two terms originated from a quick history lesson is in order (but don’t worry I’ll make it interesting). So, what is a font? And what is the difference between font and typeface? Typeface vs Fontīut the great thing is with a little knowledge you’ll be soon using both terms like a pro. Share You’ve always said font but recently you have been hearing the term typeface? To add even more confusion to the issue, it would seem both terms are used interchangeably.
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