“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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