Thoughts on Typography

It is very common for people to use typography, letters or type of letter to reference the word Font. The distinction between Font and Font Family or Font Group is not done in spoken language, mainly because professionals or those working in specialized fields use this jargon. To avoid confusion and speak in a more precise manner, it is convenient to have this small glossary at hand so you don’t develop the Babel syndrome in the land of literature.

Font Family (or Font Group)

These represent, “the grouping of varieties, classes or series of a type that are assembled under a common name, differentiating it from other groups”. A Font Family is composed of many fonts, all variations of a same design. Martinez de Sousa adds, “ The Garamond regular, bold or italic, constitutes a Font Family. Not all Families are composed of these varieties; they could hold more or less varieties. Most will have Bold or Italic versions, but perhaps you will not find some having semi-bold, oblique, condensed or bold italic, but just having a regular font group”.

In modern typology, we make an effort to differentiate font from font family, but the word font family has been used in what we call style: the classification of fonts in groups, depending on the similitude of traits and general characteristics in design. In this sense, the most famous classification was proposed by Francis Thibaudeau using “ as a base for distinction the shape of the letters, and establishes that there are four fundamental families: Helvetica, Didot, Times New Roman or Modern”.

In this blog, we will proceed with the first definition for the term Font Family or Font Group, and the later description will only be used to determine style, so that there is no confusion.

Font

The term Font in typography means, “the different varieties of letters that were elaborated in a smelting workshop by melting and casting a type (letter), then to be later employed on the printing press”. Martinez de Sousa indicates that what is currently translated as Font literally means, “melting”.

Its most current meaning is, “a grouping of letters and symbols with a particular name, based on a particular design which allows the writing of a text”. In our modern world, dominated by computers and digital writing, the word font refers to, “the same characters with a complete body (grouping) of characters that allows us to write texts with that particular character”.   

In current terms, we call Font each of the digital archives that are installed in programs of our operating systems and that can display particular character designs as we type with a keyboard. The most popular archives being, Tru Type (.ttf) and OpenType (.otf), which can to be used on any platform (Macintosh, Windows or Linux).

Typography

This is perhaps the most ambiguous term of all, the broadest definition due to the apparent confusion. Very often, it is used as a synonym for font, font family or even replacing the term for letter. Before the typographic revolution introduced by computers, the word typography was a synonym for the printing press, the art of printing or the art of assembling a book thanks to cast metal type pieces.

In the contemporary context of typographic arts – and on the latter articles of this blog – we understand the concept of typography as defined by Maria Moliner on the Dictionary of Spanish Usage (DUE), “a group characteristics of types (letters) which will make up a text”.

Or rather, as explained by Martinez de Sousa in his Dictionary of sciences and bibliography, “the general aspect of a text depending on the type (of letters) employed in its composition”.

To summarize, typography is a group characteristics, which will decide on the overall aspect of a text, from the point of view of shape/design of letters. This includes: the aesthetic look of a book, which in turn incorporates the fonts and styles used to achieve this result.

De Sousa differentiates the kinds of typography, according to their properties and usage. The invisible typography is the one used in fiction, where there is little or no variation for the eye, the overall shape or style of a letter, aside from some words in italic or some explanations from the author. Whereas, a structured typography is used in informative and complex texts, in which its “typography representations, unlike invisible typography, permits the use of various font families, collections of letters, different sizes, bold, condensed, light, oblique, italic, underlined styles, to be used in tables or columns, etc…” The other kinds of typography are: digital and bibliographic.

Typology

 This is one of those words that I learned in books. Martinez de Sousa defines this as “part of typography, which deals with the types of print, their classifications, history, morphology, traits, usage, etc…” In other words, typology is the science or study of these types and its artistic usage.

Type

This is an essential term, as many other words derive from it. In the context of calligraphy, a type is each of the individual pieces that form a letter, print signs or the types on a typewriter.  This is the minimal unit in printing technology, and in the digital era, where the typewriter is slowly vanishing, this term is reserved for a classification where it can compete with the terms letter and character. Nevertheless, it is best no to confuse them; as seen on the definitions, there are subtle differences among the three concepts.