OUGD404: An Introduction to Type 2

A quick look into the anatomy of type and the anatomical features common to glyphs and letterforms as well as the common terminology used in judging the height and size of a typeface.

Ascender: Upwards vertical stem on some lowercase letters. The stem extending above the x-height is the ascender.

Aperture: The opening of a counter to the exterior of a glyph

Bowl: The urged part os the characters that encloses the white space

Base Line: The imaginary line on which fonts/typefaces rest

Cap Height: The height from the baseline to the top of uppercase letters

Counter: Enclosed or partially enclosed circular or curved negative space of some letters e.g. d, o and g

Cross Bar: The usually horizontal stroke across the middle of uppercase H or A

Descender: Any part in a lower case letter that drops below the baseline

Ear: Decorative flourish typically found on a lower case g- upper right of the bowl

Tail: Descending decorative stroke on the uppercase letter Q or the curved diagonal on K or R

X-height: Height of lower case letters (with disregard to ascenders or descenders) The relationship of the x-height to body defines the type size. Type with a large x-height looks much bigger than type with a small x-height, even at the same size. 

Point Size

Fonts are measured in point size, usually determined by the x-height through design. How we get a fonts point size is by gaining a pica measurement. 

 1 point = 1⁄72 inches = 25.4⁄72 mm = 0.3527 mm

12 points = 1 pica

Type face and Type Families

Many people would class Times New Roman as a font, however a font only refers to the production of a typeface: there are four categories. However 'Times New Roman' is actually one typeface from a whole type family, so what's the difference?

TYPEFACE

The letters, numbers, and symbols that make up a design of type. A typeface is often part of a type family of coordinated designs. The individual typefaces are named after the family and are also specified with a designation, such as italic, bold or condensed.


TYPE FAMILY

Type family the collection of faces that were designed together and intended to be used together. For example, the Garamond font family consists of roman and italic styles, as well as regular, semibold, and bold weights. Each of the style and weight combinations is called a face.