Type 101 For Designers: Terms, Anatomy, Principles, And More
Master the terms, anatomy, and structure of type. A practical guide for designers ready to level up their typography game.
By
Joshua Joel Anthony
The Delicious Details Of Typography
Type is all about the details. And for each little detail, there’s a word to describe it. All these terms can feel overwhelming, but they help us think about and use type with clarity and precision. What’s more, they're quite straightforward once you learn what they mean. Dive into the handy glossary below, and soon you’ll be speaking the language of type like a natural!
Technical Terms You Should Know
Typeface: Simply put, a typeface is the name given to a collection of individual fonts that share a design philosophy. Helvetica, for example, is a typeface. Helvetica Light, Helvetica Roman, and Helvetica Bold are fonts within the Helvetica typeface.
Font: Each font within a typeface is a digital group of letters with a unique weight and width. The letters of a font are designed and spaced such that they can be combined by users to compose an infinite variety of words and sentences.
Lettering: A one-off composition of drawn, painted, or otherwise constructed letters. Lettering, unlike a font, is not designed to be rearranged to compose words and sentences, A lettering artist typically renders a predefined word or phrase for one specific use case.
Typography: The visual art of positioning words, sentences, and paragraphs on a digital or physical canvas for a pleasurable reading and/or aesthetic experience.
Spacing: The amount of negative space that surrounds the shapes of letters. Often overlooked, spacing is as important in type design as the shapes of letters themselves. Proper spacing ensures an even visual texture and a pleasant reading experience. If the spacing is too loose, letters can feel disconnected. Too tight, and they become an unreadable mass.
Kerning: Kerning is the spacing between specific sets of letters. Type design is like a jigsaw of letterforms: some fit well with others, some don’t. These troublesome sets of letters are called “kerning pairs” and they often require specific adjustments to their spacing to ensure an even visual texture.. Examples of common kerning pairs include ‘V’ and ‘A’, ‘T’ and ‘J’, ‘L’ and ‘Y’
X-Height: The x-height of a typeface is how tall the lowercase characters are. It is an important measurement used to describe the proportions of a typeface and one that impacts legibility. Since a lowercase ‘x’ is completely flat at the top and bottom, it is easy to measure compared to letterforms that may be curved or diagonal.
Cap Height: The height of the capital letters of a typeface. Like x-height, cap height is an important measurement of a typeface’s dimensions.
Character: This one is a little tricky because of how we use the term “character” colloquially. Technically, “character” refers to a unit of language such as a letter, number, or symbol. It is a conceptual term for the building blocks of a script.
Glyph: A glyph is a visual representation of a character. It is the physical form that an abstract concept takes. For example, if you type out the character ‘a’ in seven different fonts, you will have seven different glyphs for one single character.
Script: A script refers to the written shape and structure of alphabets. Several different languages can share a script. English, Spanish, and French, for example, all use the Latin script. The shape of the letterforms across these languages remains the same — an ‘a’ in Spanish looks the same as an ‘a’ in English.
Language: Language, essentially, is where sound and script meet. Multiple languages can share a script, but differences in the sounds that the script represents result in different languages. Simply put, when grammar and pronunciation is added to a script, it becomes a language.
Ligatures: Every type designer delights in a ligature! These special glyphs are when two or more letters are connected together. This can be done for stylistic purposes, or to avoid unwanted collisions between letters. For example, the crossbar of an ‘f’ may run into the tittle on an ‘i’ when set next to each other. To avoid this, a type designer may draw a connected ‘fi’ ligature where the crossbar of the ‘f’ runs smoothly into the stem of the ‘i’.
Serifs: Serifs are the little triangular or rectangular shapes found at the end of letterforms. Earliest examples of serifs come from Roman inscriptions. Some scholars believe serifs result from the letterforms being brushed onto the stone before carving, while others believe they are a result of the carving process itself.
Sans Serifs: Like the name suggests, “sans serif” letters are those that are constructed without serifs. This relatively young style of letterforms can be traced to the golden jubilee coins of 1809, where it first appeared. Sans serif typefaces are thought to be easier to read at small sizes, because the lack of serifs reduces visual clutter. However, some think that serifs guide the eye horizontally from one letter to the next, thus making serif typefaces easier to read..
Weight / Width: “Weight” refers to the thickness of the strokes that make up a letterform. Terms such as “thin”, “regular”, and “bold” describe the weight of a font. “Width” refers to the horizontal space occupied by letters. A font may be “condensed”, for example, or “extended”. Weight is typically used for emphasis, while width is used to save (or take up) space.
Interested In Learning More About Type?
I hope you learnt and understood a few new things about typography today. If you’d like to learn more about the application of type, we urge you to explore these two in-depth posts we’ve crafted:
On that note, I’m off to draw some letters and listen to some music. Thanks for reading!
About The Author
Joshua Joel Anthony is a designer and typographer whose work explores the emotional depth of visual storytelling. He collaborates with Supercharged and other creative studios to help brands craft memorable, meaningful identities.
Supercharged Studio is a creative technology agency that crafts websites, apps, logos, and brands. We help emerging innovators, industry leaders, hustlers, and dreamers create a competitive edge through design.
Let us help you craft the next stage of your brand identity.
Who Is Supercharged?
Supercharged Studio is a creative technology agency that crafts websites, apps, logos, and brands. We help emerging innovators, industry leaders, hustlers, and dreamers create a competitive edge through design.
