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Type

Categories

There are seven basic categories of typefaces. The general rule is to not use different typefaces from the same category in the same document, with the possible exception of ornamental. For a regular infusion of new typefaces, joing the Fontpacks group on Yahoo.

Oldstyle

Typefaces in this category are based on the hand lettering of scribes—you can see the thick/thin transition in the letters. They always have serifs that are slanted and when you draw a line through the thinnest parts of the curved strokes, the line is diagonal (this is called stress). Because of their “invisibility” they are great for body copy.

Modern

These typefaces have serifs, but the serifs are horizontal instead of slanted and they are very thin. Their stress is vertical. They tend to have a cold, elegant look and look good when very large.

Slab serif

The serifs are similar to modern only thicker. Some typefaces in this category are high on the readability scale, such as Century Schoolbook shown here, and others should be used only for advertisements, short headings, or initial caps. They appear darker on the page than old-styles. They are often used in children’s books.

Sans serif

The word “sans” means “without” in French. Sans serif typefaces are those without serifs on the ends of the strokes. Most are monoweight. Some have a slight thick/thin transition, which can be very difficult to combine with other fonts on a page but are excellent for large bodies of text.

Script

Typefaces in this category are those designed to resemble handwriting (whether cursive or print), with styles ranging from formal to whimsical. Use them sparingly. They should never be set as long blocks of text and never as all-caps. They are generally reserved for announcements, invitations, greetings, and advertisements. They can be stunning when set very large.

Decorative

This group includes typefaces of unusual and unique designs that do not fit into the other categories. These are generally reserved for specific purposes and are most effective when used at larger sizes, such as for short headlines, titles, and display purposes. They are fun and distinctive but difficult to read in large blocks.

Ornamental

Instead of text (alphanumeric) characters, Ornamental typefaces contain decorative ornaments, pictures, or symbols for some or all characters. You can use these ornaments as decorative embellishments in your documents, or as a way to add pictures to text without importing graphics. These are sometimes called wingdings or dingbats.

Contrasts

There are numerous contrasts within and among type families: size, weight, structure, form, direction, and color. Each needs to be considered when selecting a typeface for your publication.

Size

To make contrasts in size work effectively, don’t be a wimp. It could be interpreted as a mistake if the contrast isn’t great enough. Decide on the typographic item you want as a focus and emphasize it with contrasts. An unusual contrast of size can become a graphic element in itself—handy if you are limited in the graphics available for a project.

Weight

This refers to the thickness of the strokes. Most type families come with a variety of weights: regular, bold, light, extra bold, etc. Contrast of weight is one of the most effective ways of organizing information. You usually do this with headlines and subheads; try bringing that over to the table of contents or the index to make text stand out and easy to find. Some typefaces don’t really have a good bold. They may look fine on the screen, but when you print them, you can’t tell bold text from regular text. The Technical font is like this. As a script font, you don’t want to use large blocks of this text and since it doesn’t have much contrast in its bold state, it’s not useful for headlines either. This typeface is best used for captions.

Structure

This refers to how the typeface is built. Some are monoweight, such as Arial, and some have great emphasis on the thick/thin transitions, such as modern faces. If you are using type from two different families, use two families with different structures. Each typeface within a category has a similar structure, so when combining typefaces, use them from two different categories. Major rule: Never put two typefaces from the same category on the same page. Often structure alone is not enough contrast; combine it with other contrasts such as size or weight.

Form

This refers to the letter’s shape and is mainly caps versus lowercase. All words that are set in capital letters have a similar rectangular form, which makes them difficult to read. Lowercase letters, however, vary widely in form making them easier to read. Use all-caps sparingly in your documents. Roman (or normal) versus italic is another contrast of form. Combining two different italic fonts or two different scripts can cause conflicts because of the lack of contrast in the forms.

Direction

This is mainly type on a slant. It’s not the best use of contrast but occasionally may work for emphasis. Type slanting upward to the right creates a positive energy. Type slanting downward creates a negative energy. Sometimes a strong redirection creates a dramatic impact, such as type rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise so that it reads bottom to top. Direction can also refer to how a group of words is displayed on a page, such as a column of text. Contrast this with a heading that goes across several columns.

Color

Warm colors (reds, oranges) come forward and command our attention. Our eyes are very attracted to them so it takes very little to create a contrast. Cool colors (blues, greens) tend to recede from our eyes. You can get away with larger areas of a cool color; in fact, you may need more of a cool color to create an effective contrast. Remember that black and white are also colors. Color is created in a black and white document with such variances as the weight and structure of letters, and the space within and around the letters and lines. A gray, text-only page can be very dull to look at and uninviting to read. If you break up your page with “colorful” heads, you get a much more inviting document. If you plan on having your document reproduced on the copier you will need to have a black and white original. Convert your color items to black and white (or shades of gray) for best results on the copier. Copies made on a color copier can be expensive.

Capitals or lowercase?

Words set in all capital letters are often interpreted as being more important. For a one-word blast all-caps can work. Keep in mind that tests show reading matter set in all-caps is harder to read.

We normally do not read character by character, but rather word by word. Word recognition depends on the relationship of the letters to each other. The silhouette of the word’s shape is an important factor in recognizing words. When type is set in all-caps the shape of all the words is the same—rectangular—and individual words are hard to distinguish, thus making them harder to read.

All-caps also take up more space (about 30%) than lowercase letters. If you use upper and lowercase letters you can set the type in a larger size for more impact than if the type was in all-caps.

Small caps

Using small caps is an alternative to all-caps for headlines and acronyms. By using small caps, the capital letters don’t stick out and scream at you. Small caps are often used for abbreviations such as CIA.

Nomenclature

The terms capital, majuscule, and uppercase all mean the same thing. When writing first appeared, all letterforms were capitals. Medieval scribes developed faster-to-write shapes, and their amendments to the capitals (which they called majuscules) became standardized and known as minuscules: “big letters” and “small letters.” When metal type displaced handwritten type, both sets of letters were cut and cast. Printers stored the majuscules in one big drawer, or case, and the minuscules in a companion case beneath it. Hence uppercase and lowercase. The California typecase was first introduced in San Francisco in 1867. Its sales literature described it as “the only case made that will hold an ordinary font of job letters larger than a pica, without overrunning the boxes.” The box sizes varied according to the number of characters they had to contain. The lowercase “e” has the largest box. Nowadays these typecases are used to display miniature knickknacks.

When should you use all-caps?

Headline capitalization style

To continue with the capitalization problems, what about headlines? The typewriter is long gone for general use so the need for all-caps, underlines, and up-and-down style (first letter of each word is capitalized) headings are pretty much outmoded as well. Our eyes recognize words as letter-groups by scanning the upper part of the word. You can easily decipher words by seeing only their top, but it is much harder to recognize the words by their bottoms. Initials caps impede and retard reading speed because they disturb the natural patterns and relationships of letters to each other. Also, an up-and-down style prevents the reader from noticing proper names and acronyms, both of which use capital letters as distinguishing characteristics. If you want your product to read smoothly, look contemporary, and be logically crafted, get rid of the up-and-down style. Instead, start your headlines with a capital letter and continue in lowercase (downstyle) as if it were a normal sentence that happened to be important and therefore deserved a bigger and bolder setting. Don’t put a period at the end.

Type Trivia

Ever wonder where the little dot over the lowercase “i” came from? It was added by scribes to help distinguish the “i” from the “m,” “n,” and “v,” which all had jagged tops when handwritten. Something had to be done to improve the legibility of a word like minimum.