4 ms·

> I guess today 2017 "font" now equals "typeface." As a non-native English speaker I really don't understand the subtle difference between these words.

tangue 9y ago
Roughly speaking typeface is the design and font is the digital file. It dates back from time when fonts were made of lead in a wooden case and is ill suited to our digital world. A modern approximation of typeface is "font-family". That being said ,except for typography nerds nobody gives a s* about that, and unless you're on a design forum the two are interchangeable.
dghf 9y ago
Typeface is the design, font is the implementation. In movable-type printing, a font is a set of metal slugs, each bearing a character from the typeface. In digital typography, a font is typically a TTF or OTF file.
pjc50 9y ago
Nobody except Donald Knuth and recreational pedants bothers to make that distinction.
pluma 9y ago
https://www.fastcodesign.com/3028971/whats-the-difference-between-a-font-and-a-typeface https://www.fastcodesign.com/3028971/whats-the-difference-be... > Even among type professionals, there’s a growing acceptance that for most people, the terms font and typeface can be used interchangeably. Only experts really need to worry about it. > “For most people in most situations, those terms can swap around without any trouble,” Tobias Frere-Jones tells Co.Design. “The distinction would matter in type design, obviously, but also contexts which involve engineering, like app development or web design.” I'd agree with that. To save you reading the entire article, here's the rough definition presented in it: Typeface refers to the set of all the distinct shapes. It's what most people mean when they say "font" in everyday life. Font refers to a specific weight at a specific size. Even as a web developer I find that distinction confusing because a single "font" file will usually support any number of sizes and can be rendered in different weights or even as oblique, although of course the result will be less sophisticated than using the "hand-crafted" weight variants or italics. And of course there are file formats that can actually contain more than one such "font" (even from different typefaces). So outside of actual type design or technical specifications I would say that the terms should be treated as interchangeable because nobody can be bothered using them correctly. I'd actually argue even type designers don't care much what you call them. Or at least that seems to go for the kind of type designers that actually design types rather than correcting people on the Internet.
- Sean1708 9y ago
  > Typeface refers to the set of all the distinct shapes. It's what most people mean when they say "font" in everyday life. > Font refers to a specific weight at a specific size. That's a much better summary than the article's "In brief:" sentence.
  - keithpeter 9y ago
    UK: a font was originally a fount of type (from fountain). http://britishletterpress.co.uk/type-and-typography/type-synopses/typefounders-proportions/ http://britishletterpress.co.uk/type-and-typography/type-syn... Above dates from the days when letterpress was still around (my local letterpress based jobbing printer closed his shop in the late 80s/early 90s because of repeated break-ins after his lead). Article tends to suggest a fount would be a given weight/style of a typeface.
deleted 9y ago
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bboreham 9y ago
In British English, "font" is the thing you dunk a baby in at church, while "fount" is a set of type of one particular face and size.
solarkraft 9y ago
"Font" is even used by many editors, so I'm not surprised this is how people refer to it. It's also a much simpler word to say, so I understand it. They don't refer to the same thing, however. A font was originally meant to mean variations of a typeface, such as italics. But the german Wikipedia already calls it a typeface and so does the english one in the informatics context.

tangue 9y ago

Roughly speaking typeface is the design and font is the digital file. It dates back from time when fonts were made of lead in a wooden case and is ill suited to our digital world. A modern approximation of typeface is "font-family". That being said ,except for typography nerds nobody gives a s* about that, and unless you're on a design forum the two are interchangeable.

dghf 9y ago

Typeface is the design, font is the implementation. In movable-type printing, a font is a set of metal slugs, each bearing a character from the typeface. In digital typography, a font is typically a TTF or OTF file.

pjc50 9y ago

Nobody except Donald Knuth and recreational pedants bothers to make that distinction.

pluma 9y ago

https://www.fastcodesign.com/3028971/whats-the-difference-between-a-font-and-a-typeface https://www.fastcodesign.com/3028971/whats-the-difference-be... > Even among type professionals, there’s a growing acceptance that for most people, the terms font and typeface can be used interchangeably. Only experts really need to worry about it. > “For most people in most situations, those terms can swap around without any trouble,” Tobias Frere-Jones tells Co.Design. “The distinction would matter in type design, obviously, but also contexts which involve engineering, like app development or web design.” I'd agree with that. To save you reading the entire article, here's the rough definition presented in it: Typeface refers to the set of all the distinct shapes. It's what most people mean when they say "font" in everyday life. Font refers to a specific weight at a specific size. Even as a web developer I find that distinction confusing because a single "font" file will usually support any number of sizes and can be rendered in different weights or even as oblique, although of course the result will be less sophisticated than using the "hand-crafted" weight variants or italics. And of course there are file formats that can actually contain more than one such "font" (even from different typefaces). So outside of actual type design or technical specifications I would say that the terms should be treated as interchangeable because nobody can be bothered using them correctly. I'd actually argue even type designers don't care much what you call them. Or at least that seems to go for the kind of type designers that actually design types rather than correcting people on the Internet.

Sean1708 9y ago
> Typeface refers to the set of all the distinct shapes. It's what most people mean when they say "font" in everyday life. > Font refers to a specific weight at a specific size. That's a much better summary than the article's "In brief:" sentence.
- keithpeter 9y ago
  UK: a font was originally a fount of type (from fountain). http://britishletterpress.co.uk/type-and-typography/type-synopses/typefounders-proportions/ http://britishletterpress.co.uk/type-and-typography/type-syn... Above dates from the days when letterpress was still around (my local letterpress based jobbing printer closed his shop in the late 80s/early 90s because of repeated break-ins after his lead). Article tends to suggest a fount would be a given weight/style of a typeface.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

bboreham 9y ago

In British English, "font" is the thing you dunk a baby in at church, while "fount" is a set of type of one particular face and size.

solarkraft 9y ago

"Font" is even used by many editors, so I'm not surprised this is how people refer to it. It's also a much simpler word to say, so I understand it. They don't refer to the same thing, however. A font was originally meant to mean variations of a typeface, such as italics. But the german Wikipedia already calls it a typeface and so does the english one in the informatics context.