Typeface Characteristics

Small Caps: Small caps are an option that most fonts have where all the letters are capital, but unless they are actually capitalized they are the same size as the lowercase, but look like capital letters. This is different than all Caps because all caps are all the same size as normal capital letters. My font, Rockwell, has small caps. 

Ligatures: Ligatures are when two characters or letters are connected by one small characteristic. Many fonts have this as to avoid the awkward space caused by letters that have tails or are much wider than normal letters. To they become connected to have a more clean look. Common letters that use ligatures are "f" and "i". or "v" and "w". Rockwell does not have ligatures, but an example is Adobe Garamond Pro. 

Foot marks and inch marks vs. Apostrophes and quote marks: Footmarks are used in measurements, such as when abbreviating for "feet". Apostrophes are just a character used for proper grammar. The same goes for quote marks and inch marks, but inch marks are used to abbreviate inches. 

Hyphen, En Dash, and Em Dash: Hyphens are used in proper grammar to either separate one word, or to combine two words.  En Dashes and Em Dashes are the same thing but just in different sizes, the En Dash is originally suppose to be the same length as the "n" in that font, and the Em Dash is suppose to be equal to the "m" length. The hyphen then being the smallest of the three. 

Font Classifications: Old Style, Transitional, Modern, Slab Serif and Sans Serif

Old Style: Old style is based on hand lettering from the late 15th century. It has thick to thin transitions but, not a dramatic difference between the thicknesses. It's serifs are always angled. A couple examples of Old Style type is Times New Roman, Palantino Linotype, and Garamond. 

Transitional: Transitional type has more contrast between the thicknesses and usually has more horizontal serifs. Transitional also has a vertical stress on lower case letters. Examples are Baskerville, Bookman, and Clearface.

Modern: Modern typefaces have very high contrast between strokes. They have vertical stress on the axis, and hairline serifs with no brackets. Examples are Didone, Ambroise, and Moderno FB.

Slab Serif: Slab Serifs have very little contrast in stroke weights, with their serifs are horizontal and  the same size as their stroke weights. Examples are Rockwell, Museo Slab, and Sanchez. 

San Serif: The most important characteristic of San Serif typeface are just that they do not have feet or brackets. Examples are Arial, Futura, and Calibri. 

Defining characteristics of these classifications:

Stroke weight: the thickness of the typeface, usually come with 3 stroke weights; regular, bold, and italic. 

Axis/Stress: the angle that the counter has, whether its is oblique or upright. 

Small caps: where the letters are capital but are still the same size as the lowercase letters. 

Lining figures: a font that has all the letters the same height.

Non-aligning figures: where the font does not have a specific height for all the letters. 

Ligatures: a special character that some fonts have where some of the are joined by ligatures, so the letters are linked together. 

Type is measured by several different characteristics. These characteristics include the baseline, which is the bottom lie that all the letters sit on; the comes the ascender and descender line, which is the line where the character that have ascenders or descenders reach to, and points, which is how tall all the letters or body size. Just to name a few of the overall measurements used in typeface design that keep the font uniform, or not, and make each font unique. 

Project II: Parts Make a Whole

The objective of this project was basically to create our own typeface. Starting on paper, and creating typefaces by hand, inspired by real life objects. Then taking those designs and using a couple different programs to create a digital copy of the types and cleaning them up to make them look more official so we are able to generate a clean, original font from them. We then create an animated GIF and poster to display the font.