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A typeface is the design, a font is a specific incarnation of it. Helvetica Bold 12pt and Helvetica 18pt are two different fonts from the same typeface, Helveti
by GuiA 9y ago
A typeface is the design, a font is a specific incarnation of it. Helvetica Bold 12pt and Helvetica 18pt are two different fonts from the same typeface, Helvetica.
This comes from letterpress days where “font” referred to a collection of lead characters of a given typeface, weight, and size.
- altair11 9y agoNo, couchand is right. Now a font is the file (you're almost right on it’s origin, it originates from steel punchcutting where each point size did need it’s own font). So a font is helvetica-bold.otf not Helvetica Bold. Helvetica Bold is a weight of Helvetica. (All of this is likely to alter slightly though with the advent of variable fonts.)
- stestagg 9y agoExcept, arguably he’s also wrong. One definition it font is as described above. Another, as defined by usage, is as the original author used