We are complete font geeks here (curvy little ampersand sir? like a tall riser do you? ooh. Partial to a bit of Grotesk sir? Mmm? Suits you sir) – so we’re making our Fridays all about the font.
Or typeface.
“What’s the difference?” We hear you implore…
Well we’re glad you asked because we can clear up that (actually quite irritating) point of confusion for you….
A typeface is simply the name of a style of lettering. Eg ‘Irma’ which is the typeface used in the image here. The FONT (used to be called a ‘fount’ even up to the 70s) refers to the complete set of letters of a typeface including punctuation marks that a printer would use in a printing press. There would be duplicates of the letters with more of the popular letters like ‘E’ for example.
One typeface has many different FONTS, using the above example, the font in the image here is Irma Text Standard Black Italic.
The words are used interchangeably today, but if I ask, “what typeface is that?” I expect the answer ‘Helvetica’, and if I ask “what font is that?” I want to know what weight, if it’s bold, condensed, standard etc and in what size, eg Franklin Gothic Demi Condensed 14pt. I told you – we’re a little obsessive.
So there you go. I’m glad we cleared that up.
If your font, or typeface is getting a little tired and needs a re-think, drop us a line to see how we can help!
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