Saturday, October 18, 2014

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. 

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