6 ms·

Typeface vs. Font: Terminology Smackdown

45 points by bbx 13y ago

fsck--off 13y ago
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 thing, the description of a typeface—in computer code, photographic film, or metal—used to image the type. The font is the cookie cutter, and the typeface is the cookie (see Figure 3 1).† When you look at a page of type, you can say, “What typeface is that? ” or “What font was used to set that? ” But you can’t say, “What font is that? ” because you’re not looking at a font; you’re looking at the product of a font. The confusion between the terms arises largely from the ambiguous use of the term font in computer programs, most of which have a Font menu. Although that menu lists what fonts are available for use by the program, it could just as easily be called the Typeface menu, as it also lists the typefaces available for your pages. In fact, since some fonts contain data for more than one typeface, it would be more accurate to call it the Typeface menu." † Figure 3.1 shows an example font (the computer code) and its corresponding typeface.
- shittyanalogy 13y ago
  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.
jamesbritt 13y ago
This reminds me of the conflation of tag and element in discussions about HTML/XML markup. There's a meaningful difference. but you still end up dealing with Web frameworks that have a method for script_tag that inserts an element that has two tags. And when developers start talking about doing something with tags you have to mentally parse or just ask if they really mean tags or elements. http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200508/html_tags_vs_elements_vs_attributes/ http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200508/html_tags_vs_el...
BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
How are those examples the same typeface, as the author claims? The details in the shapes of the glyphs are strikingly different. Wouldn't it be more correct to say they are distinct typefaces of a particular family (Garamond)?
- ingebretsen 13y ago
  That's a totally fair point. They're really visually distinct, especially to someone with any eye for type. Garamond is confusing because it's so old and so influential. Maybe it would have been better to choose something like Futura which, I think, most people would agree is a single typeface but can be purchased digitally from multiple foundries as a distinct font.
JumpCrisscross 13y ago
>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 traditional print, the distinction is easy: a font was a typeface set at a certain size, weight and style and cast in metal...In its digital form, fonts are more flexible and the moment when a typeface becomes a font is way more nuanced. ∴ In traditional print typeface != font. But today, the difference is so nuanced, the point of delineation so subjective, that the gradient, while interesting to talk about, can be safely ignored.
- kps 13y ago
  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?).
tmoertel 13y ago
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 to have some misguided printer swap it out for Adobe Garamond under the impression that they were "the same typeface."
- crazygringo 13y ago
  Exactly. Amazing how even the article gets it wrong. Sheesh. Never in my life have I heard "Garamond" called a single typeface. They are all different Garamond typefaces. While the bold, italic, display, caption, etc. versions of each are the different fonts.
  - nchlswu 13y ago
    wouldn't bold, italic, etc., be variants of a typeface, with a corresponding font?
- tmoertel 13y ago
  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.
  - 13y ago
zokier 13y ago
The matter gets even muddier when you start thinking of different weights, sizes and styles (eg italics). Are 12pt and 14pt Helveticas different fonts?
- shittyanalogy 13y ago
  Depends, did you use unique font files to set your 12pt and 14pt type? Or did your computer scale them algorithmically from one file?
  - zokier 13y ago
    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.
- Mindless2112 13y ago
  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 http://www.adobe.com/products/type/opentype.html
shittyanalogy 13y ago
shitty analogy for developers: Typeface : a standard. Font : an implementation.
ademarre 13y ago
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 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.
- ademarre 13y ago
  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.
- ingebretsen 13y ago
  That's a fantastic quote and I'll update the post with that. The only corner case that I don't think it covers is type that has been digitally converted from an analog form to its digital equivalent. Lots of favorite typefaces fall into this category: Futura, Helvetica, Rockwell, etc.
cstrat 13y ago
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...
was_hellbanned 13y ago
This is a nice, fat, red flag for human interaction. If you find someone mentioning distinctions of this sort, you can be reasonably sure you're dealing with a pedant who enjoys 'educating' or correcting more than producing or doing.
adamconroy 13y ago
This would be a good example for that 4chan list. [Mundane x] vs [Mundane Y], Let me tell you how little you know (and I didn't know either until yesterday)

45 points by bbx 13y ago

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 thing, the description of a typeface—in computer code, photographic film, or metal—used to image the type. The font is the cookie cutter, and the typeface is the cookie (see Figure 3 1).† When you look at a page of type, you can say, “What typeface is that? ” or “What font was used to set that? ” But you can’t say, “What font is that? ” because you’re not looking at a font; you’re looking at the product of a font. The confusion between the terms arises largely from the ambiguous use of the term font in computer programs, most of which have a Font menu. Although that menu lists what fonts are available for use by the program, it could just as easily be called the Typeface menu, as it also lists the typefaces available for your pages. In fact, since some fonts contain data for more than one typeface, it would be more accurate to call it the Typeface menu." † Figure 3.1 shows an example font (the computer code) and its corresponding typeface.

shittyanalogy 13y ago
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.

jamesbritt 13y ago

This reminds me of the conflation of tag and element in discussions about HTML/XML markup. There's a meaningful difference. but you still end up dealing with Web frameworks that have a method for script_tag that inserts an element that has two tags. And when developers start talking about doing something with tags you have to mentally parse or just ask if they really mean tags or elements. http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200508/html_tags_vs_elements_vs_attributes/ http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200508/html_tags_vs_el...

BHSPitMonkey 13y ago

How are those examples the same typeface, as the author claims? The details in the shapes of the glyphs are strikingly different. Wouldn't it be more correct to say they are distinct typefaces of a particular family (Garamond)?

ingebretsen 13y ago
That's a totally fair point. They're really visually distinct, especially to someone with any eye for type. Garamond is confusing because it's so old and so influential. Maybe it would have been better to choose something like Futura which, I think, most people would agree is a single typeface but can be purchased digitally from multiple foundries as a distinct font.

JumpCrisscross 13y ago

>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 traditional print, the distinction is easy: a font was a typeface set at a certain size, weight and style and cast in metal...In its digital form, fonts are more flexible and the moment when a typeface becomes a font is way more nuanced. ∴ In traditional print typeface != font. But today, the difference is so nuanced, the point of delineation so subjective, that the gradient, while interesting to talk about, can be safely ignored.

kps 13y ago
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?).

tmoertel 13y ago

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 to have some misguided printer swap it out for Adobe Garamond under the impression that they were "the same typeface."

crazygringo 13y ago
Exactly. Amazing how even the article gets it wrong. Sheesh. Never in my life have I heard "Garamond" called a single typeface. They are all different Garamond typefaces. While the bold, italic, display, caption, etc. versions of each are the different fonts.
- nchlswu 13y ago
  wouldn't bold, italic, etc., be variants of a typeface, with a corresponding font?
tmoertel 13y ago
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.
- 13y ago

zokier 13y ago

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

shittyanalogy 13y ago
Depends, did you use unique font files to set your 12pt and 14pt type? Or did your computer scale them algorithmically from one file?
- zokier 13y ago
  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.
Mindless2112 13y ago
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 http://www.adobe.com/products/type/opentype.html

shittyanalogy 13y ago

shitty analogy for developers: Typeface : a standard. Font : an implementation.

ademarre 13y ago

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 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.

ademarre 13y ago
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.
ingebretsen 13y ago
That's a fantastic quote and I'll update the post with that. The only corner case that I don't think it covers is type that has been digitally converted from an analog form to its digital equivalent. Lots of favorite typefaces fall into this category: Futura, Helvetica, Rockwell, etc.

cstrat 13y ago

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...

was_hellbanned 13y ago

This is a nice, fat, red flag for human interaction. If you find someone mentioning distinctions of this sort, you can be reasonably sure you're dealing with a pedant who enjoys 'educating' or correcting more than producing or doing.

adamconroy 13y ago

This would be a good example for that 4chan list. [Mundane x] vs [Mundane Y], Let me tell you how little you know (and I didn't know either until yesterday)