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Typeface vs. Font: Terminology Smackdown

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Re: Typeface vs. Font: Terminology Smackdown

#11

Post by shittyanalogy »

fsck--off wrote: post #2

Here's a pretty good explanation from The Complete Manual of Typography , by James Felici: "No two words in typography are as commonly misused as font and typeface. A typeface is a collection of characters—letters, numbers, symbols, punctuation marks, etc.—that are designed to work together like the parts of a coordinated outfit. A typeface is an alphabet with a certain design. A font, in contrast, is a physical thin…

Except that your computer is actually reading from a bunch of font files, not typeface files. It is called a font menu, because they are fonts. The vast majority of software doesn't deal with typefaces, they deal with individual font files. Which are often company specific implementations of typefaces.

Re: Typeface vs. Font: Terminology Smackdown

#12

Post by Mindless2112 »

zokier wrote: post #7

The matter gets even muddier when you start thinking of different weights, sizes and styles (eg italics). Are 12pt and 14pt Helveticas different fonts?

Even muddier, for some OpenType fonts, you might even get different glyphs depending on what point size you choose (apparently called "opticals" [1]).

[1] http://www.adobe.com/products/type/opentype.html

Re: Typeface vs. Font: Terminology Smackdown

#13

Post by ademarre »

While I appreciate the desire for fastidiousness, I don't entirely agree with Mr. Ingebretsen.

I prefer Jon Tan's perspective: http://v1.jontangerine.com/log/2008/08/typeface--font

A typeface is a family of fonts (very often by the same designer). Within a typeface there will be fonts of varying weights or other variations. E.g., light, bold, semi-bold, condensed, italic, etc. Each such variation is a different font. The only evolution in terminology that results from the transition from metal-cast to digital fonts is that (point) size is no longer fixed.

The Garamond fonts he lists are not members of a "Garamond" typeface. Rather, those fonts are each members of their own respective typefaces which happen to be different interpretations of a theme.

Re: Typeface vs. Font: Terminology Smackdown

#14

Post by zokier »

shittyanalogy wrote: post #10
zokier wrote: post #7

The matter gets even muddier when you start thinking of different weights, sizes and styles (eg italics). Are 12pt and 14pt Helveticas different fonts?

Depends, did you use unique font files to set your 12pt and 14pt type? Or did your computer scale them algorithmically from one file?

Most font files have hand-hinted letterforms/glyphs for multiple sizes, that is pretty much the cornerstone of modern type rendering. So while the glyphs are contained in a singular file, they are not necessarily rendered from the exactly same curves.

Re: Typeface vs. Font: Terminology Smackdown

#15

Post by ademarre »

ademarre wrote: post #13

While I appreciate the desire for fastidiousness, I don't entirely agree with Mr. Ingebretsen. I prefer Jon Tan's perspective: http://v1.jontangerine.com/log/2008/08/typeface--font A typeface is a family of fonts (very often by the same designer). Within a typeface there will be fonts of varying weights or other variations. E.g., light, bold, semi-bold, condensed, italic, etc. Each such variation is a different font.…

To revise his analogy with music: Garamond would be the genre, but the analogy falls apart from there. Adobe Garamond Pro is a typeface, so maybe that could be likened to an album? Adobe Garamond Pro Regular is a font, as is Adobe Garamond Pro Bold Italic.

Re: Typeface vs. Font: Terminology Smackdown

#16

Post by kps »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

> Wikipedia even says they’re synonymous. I disagree. This raises my level of scrutiny. > Even if you might ask someone about a favorite CD, Rolling Stone wouldn’t. They would call those albums. When CDs were the dominant music medium, this difference was anachronistically pedantic. With the analogy of technology sanding down a previously meaningful difference in mind, re-reading this line was telling: > In tradition…

The term ‘album’ comes from the pre-LP practice of selling or storing related records in a bound set of sleeves, analogous to a photo album (which was also once a physical object, OK?).

Re: Typeface vs. Font: Terminology Smackdown

#17

Post by cstrat »

I understand that argument that the author is making, however why does that make what Microsoft tweeted incorrect? Why is it incorrect of them to ask people what their favourite font is? Perhaps they intended for the people to respond to the question with a font choice, not typeface...

Re: Typeface vs. Font: Terminology Smackdown

#19

Post by tmoertel »

tmoertel wrote: post #6

The article seems to get it wrong. It claims, for example, that Garamond 3, Adobe Garamond, and ITC Garamond are "all the same typeface, but each is a different font." They are actually different typefaces, each based on Garamond's (or Jannon's) earlier designs. The key is that they are different designs . That's why they have different names and also why nobody who specified Garamond 3 for a project would be happy t…

UPDATE: I descended into the basement to retrieve my copy of Cleeton, Pitkin, and Cornwell's General Printing, 3rd edition, 1963. (Back then Glen U. Cleeton was the Dean of the School of Printing Management at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, better known today as Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering.) Anyway, one sentence from the book makes it clear:

"A font is an assortment of one size and face of type."

In other words, most faces came in multiple sizes, and each face-size pairing (that you could buy) was called a font. A.T.F. Goudy Bold, to use an example from the book, came in the following sizes: 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 60, 72, and 96 (all units given in typographer's points). Complicating the matter was that each font had a slight variation of the face design to accommodate the way that ink behaved on the type differently and was interpreted by the human eye differently at different sizes.

Re: Typeface vs. Font: Terminology Smackdown

#20

Post by ingebretsen »

tmoertel wrote: post #19
tmoertel wrote: post #6

The article seems to get it wrong. It claims, for example, that Garamond 3, Adobe Garamond, and ITC Garamond are "all the same typeface, but each is a different font." They are actually different typefaces, each based on Garamond's (or Jannon's) earlier designs. The key is that they are different designs . That's why they have different names and also why nobody who specified Garamond 3 for a project would be happy t…

UPDATE: I descended into the basement to retrieve my copy of Cleeton, Pitkin, and Cornwell's General Printing , 3rd edition, 1963. (Back then Glen U. Cleeton was the Dean of the School of Printing Management at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, better known today as Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering.) Anyway, one sentence from the book makes it clear: "A font is an assortment of one size and fac…

The distinction was easier before digital type. Today we have no physical object to represent a font. The font file itself might be the closest analog to pre-digital fonts but that seems to be an even more extreme view than I took in the post.
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