All About Fonts and Typography in Printing

Did you know that the Vulgate Bible, the first mass-produced book, contained either 40 or 42 lines per page depending on when it was printed, and used a blackletter style typeface now known as Textura? These printed bibles are called the Gutenberg Bibles and there was a total of 49 copies printed. The printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenberg around 1440, set the stage for the development and growth of typography. The beautifully printed pages of his early texts up to the layout of this webpage all utilize the art of typography. A traditional printing press uses moveable metal letters that can be arranged and rearranged in a template for mass publishing. By using premade sets of letters, a publisher could produce texts faster than ever and soon hundreds of publishers were making their own fonts and typefaces. Typography is essentially the art of making text attractive and readable through the careful choice of fonts, colors, and other design criteria. For instance, a whimsical typeface can lend an air of fantasy to a fairy tale, while a bold, plain font is best for conveying information on a poster.

Typography combined with images and photography is known as the field of graphic design. Digital typography is a medium of typography that grew out of the internet and the consumption of media through screens, demanding different rules for readability than traditional print typography. Nonetheless, print typography is an ancient art that has evolved over the centuries into hundreds of fonts, designs, rules, and styles and remains an important component of design, marketing, advertising, and publishing.

Types of Typefaces

When you're working on a document you've probably noticed the hundreds of different fonts to choose from. Usually, you'll start with Calibri and maybe change it to Arial or Times New Roman, and hopefully not Comic Sans. Each of these fonts belongs to a number of classes and categories. The two broadest typefaces categories are serif and sans serif fonts. A serif font has little "feet" that stick out, such as Times New Roman, and is considered more traditional. Serif fonts also make reading large chunks of text easier on the eyes, which is why it is a common font for essays and academic papers. A sans serif font, sans meaning without, is a font such as Arial that is more modern and basic, without the serifs. Other sans serif fonts are Helvetica and Calibri. Proportional and monospace are other font types that deal with the amount of space each letter uses. A proportional font will see the letter w use more space than the letter I, while a monospace font will utilize the same space for both letters.

Important Terminology

Like every area of study, typography has terms that are unfamiliar to the layperson. The X height is the height of each character from the base to the mean line in font since it is based on the letter X. The set-width is the width of each letter, with an additional space accounted for that serves as a break against other letters. Most likely you've already heard about font sizes, such as 10 points, 12 points, etc. A point is 1/72 of an inch, making a 72-point font 1 inch tall. Pica is a measurement of 12 points, which measures column widths. Kerning is adjusting individual letters so they don't run together and create an unsightly image, like a capital W next to a capital T. At the end of the W and the beginning, the horizontal portion of the T would be slightly offset in a properly kerned font. The spacing between all the letters is known as tracking, which is also an option you might see in the toolbar of your word processor. The top of a letter is known as an ascender while the bottom stroke is called a descender.


Families and Fonts

For some time, typography consisted of only Roman-type lettering, as this was the only font style known. As the printing press took off, publishers sought other fonts that facilitated the production and readability of their texts. Italic fonts (Italic from Italy) were borne out of this and became popular in the Renaissance in the 16th century and served as another kind of typeface. As printing evolved throughout the centuries, printers began grouping certain font types together, leaving typography with multiple font families. Today, the number of font families is in the thousands, but some of the common groupings are Old Style, Transitional, Modern, Sans Serif, Slab Serif, Script Cursive, and Decorative. Script fonts are those similar to a handwritten letter, while decorative fonts are usually more ornate and suited to titles and headlines. Monospace fonts are useful for writing any computer or HTML code, as their spacing aids in writing code lines. No matter what kind of document you're typing or printing there's a font for you.


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