Typography
101
Typography is the art of written communication.
And there’s a lot to it - so let’s start with the basics and level up to the advanced concepts.
For starters, there are two common typography terms that are easily misunderstood: typeface and font.
In short, a typeface is a set of letters, numbers and symbols (a.k.a. “glyphs”) that have a unified style and are design to work well together. These stylistically-unified sets get names like Helvetica, Trajan, Times New Roman, etc.
But before computers, rendering these typefaces on a page was tricky. A typesetter’s whole job was to arrange small blocks of “movable type” one glyph at a time in order to form the content on a page, poster, etc.
These sets of blocks with the same size, weight and style of a given typeface were called . . . fonts.
So when things went digital, folks got confused.
Categories
Typefaces are typically grouped into 4 main categories:
Serif
Sans Serif
Script
Decorative
Serif typefaces have terminals that end with a
San Serif typefaces
Script Typefaces
Decorative typefaces typically evoke a specific: time period (Ancient Rome, Old West, 1970’s, etc) or culture (Hip Hop, Sports, ? )