What's your type: A Guide to Typography Part I
A Typography Mini-Series
What's your type? You like em small, short, chunky, slim, conservative, or bold? You may think I'm talking about a person, but in all actuality, I'm talking about different typefaces. When we look and read things in our everyday life, what we see, we would simply call it letters or words.
Butttttt....in the wonderful world of typography, it is more technical and complex. You have typefaces, Serifs, San Serifs, and so much more. You are probably thinking, “Whatttttttt??? I thought most of the letterings that I read online were all referred to as just plain ole fonts??” NAH. That’s not the case at all. Actually, the term “font” is the most common word that is often used incorrectly. The correct term is “typeface” (type is the shorter version). Font is a proper term but it's a typeface within a Typeface Family. Confused? I know I was when I took my typography class, but don't worry I'm going to break it down for you in a simple way.
Let’s look at these TYPE of technical terms. ( see what I did there 🤣)
TYPOGRAPHY — The top of the pyramid
Typography can really make an impact when it comes to anything that deals with branding and logos. Basically, Typography it is the style and appearance of a text or the visual component of a written word . It can either enhance or take away from a design. Why? Because it sets the mood and tone. Its the entire package as a whole. How its arranged and created to make a word. Simple right?
Let us dig a little deeper, shall we?
TYPEFACE.
Typeface basically is the style or design of a set of characters Think of the required typeface we have to use when writing a paper in highschool. Its not the cool groovy looking font in our Word Document selctions. So it's no other than...Ding ding ding! You guessed, the dreadful Times New Romans.
Easy Peasy Right? On to the next then.
FONT
I’m sure this word rings a bell because we literally use it as a reference for anything when it comes to typography. Here is where it gets confusing for most people because it has basically been normalized. 🙄 FONT is actually the size, weight, and style of a character. Think about how we always wanted to cheat and use 14 point font size we have to use in a paper inside of the 12 lol . Thats all it is, those three little buttons we have at the type of Word , Bold , Italic, and font size.
Simple right?
Now that I have explained some of the main technical terms, here is where it gets fun. There are a bunch of typefaces just take a look at DaFont. But if you look at the technical side of it, typefaces are broken down into 2 main categories…that is also broken down into subcategories (I’ll save that for a later date because it is a whole nother chapter within itself). I won’t go too in-depth I promise, I just want to help you see how a certain typeface can convey a message about your brand without even knowing it.
So, Check this out.
When choosing a typeface there are a variety of choices (12 to be exact). But I’m only going to tell you about the most commonly used ones that are easily recognizable.
