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.