Geometric Sans-Serifs are those faces that are based on strict geometric forms. I’m actually combining three different groups here (Geometric, Realist and Grotesk), but there is enough in common between these groups that we can think of them as one entity for now. Let’s look at two major groups without serifs (serifs being the little feet at the ends of the letterforms), two with serifs, and one outlier (with big, boxey feet). The following list is not meant as a comprehensive classification of each and every category of type (there are plenty of great sites on the web that already tackle this, such as Typedia’s type classifications) but rather as a manageable shorthand overview of key groups. Typefaces can be divided and subdivided into dozens of categories (Scotch Modern, anybody?), but we only really need to keep track of five groups to establish a working understanding of the majority of type being used in the present-day landscape. The next challenge is to develop some kind of structure by which we can mentally categorize the different typefaces we run across. The clothing analogy gives us a good idea of what kind of closet we need to put together. Versatile and comfortable to work with, these faces are like a favorite pair of jeans for designers. My particular safety blankets are: Myriad, Gotham, DIN, Akzidenz Grotesk and Interstate among the sans Mercury, Electra and Perpetua among the serif faces.Ī large type family like Helvetica Neue can be used to express a range of voices and emotions. Usually, these are faces that have a number of weights (Light, Regular, Bold, etc) and/or cuts (Italic, Condensed, etc). It’s not that I like these better than my cherished flares, exactly… I just seem to wind up wearing them most of the time.Įvery designer has a few workhorse typefaces that are like comfortable jeans: they go with everything, they seem to adapt to their surroundings and become more relaxed or more formal as the occasion calls for, and they just seem to come out of the closet day after day. More often, I find myself putting on the same old pair of Levis morning after morning. Every designer has a few favorite fonts like this - expressive personal favorites that we hold onto and wait for the perfect festive occasion to use. My “favorite” piece of clothing is probably an outlandish pair of 70s flare bellbottoms that I bought at a thrift store, but the reality is that these don’t make it out of my closet very often outside of Halloween. While appropriateness isn’t a sexy concept, it’s the acid test that should guide our choice of font. Just as with clothing, there’s a distinction between typefaces that are expressive and stylish versus those that are useful and appropriate to many situations, and our job is to try to find the right balance for the occasion. Used under Creative Commons license.)įor better or for worse, picking a typeface is more like getting dressed in the morning. The most appropriate analogy for picking type. This approach is problematic, because it places too much importance on individuality. Many of my beginning students go about picking a font as though they were searching for new music to listen to: they assess the personality of each face and look for something unique and distinctive that expresses their particular aesthetic taste, perspective and personal history. Here are five guidelines for picking and using fonts that I’ve developed in the course of using and teaching typography. Selecting the right typeface is a mixture of firm rules and loose intuition, and takes years of experience to develop a feeling for. There seem to be endless choices - from normal, conventional-looking fonts to novelty candy cane fonts and bunny fonts - with no way of understanding the options, only never-ending lists of categories and recommendations.
#Typeface meaning how to#
In the end, you will learn how to pick the right typeface and what it requires.įor many beginners, the task of picking fonts is a mystifying process.
The article will cover 5 main principles which will provide you with the practical guidance how to select, apply and mix different fonts.
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