Learning session 06: Introduction to Typography

Topic

Today I mainly focused on familiarising my self with typography. So let’s go ahead and I will tell you about my first introduction process to typography.

What I learned

After researching about what are typography, typeface, and fonts I learned brand new stuff which I’m going to talk about in this article. Fonts play an essential role in design they set the mood and help form an opinion before you get to read the text.

While doing some research I found an interesting fact about typography:

It turns out typography design wasn’t all that back in the nineteenth century. Some display typefaces were designed to be extremely and over-aggressively bold purely to attract attention.

Typeface

After some google research, I found that typefaces and fonts are not the same things Which were a little shocking. A typeface is a set of design features for letters including numbers, punctuation marks, and symbols. On another hand font is the variation in weight and size of a typeface.

Serif typefaces

This type of typeface includes slights of decorative lines, this typeface has a long history, dating back hundreds of years. It’s traditional and it was used in early print magazines. They can make the product trustworthy and reliable and also can get the users to feel classy, romantic, and sophisticated too.

Sans-serif typeface

I also learned that serif and sans serif typefaces are two common typefaces for designing a product, document, book, etc… The only difference that stands between this two is that sans serif typeface doesn’t include the decorative lines at the ends of the letters.

The most known sans-serifs are Arial, Helvetica, and Tahoma which are compatible with almost any device.

Script typefaces

are origin from handwriting and calligraphy. This kind of typeface is used in the logo for example the Coca-Cola one.

Many Script typefaces can be a challenge to read which breaks the UX in a product.

Slab serif typeface there are two kinds of these typefaces: bold and thick and they can be rounded or angular serifs.

They were often used in the early newspaper. You can use this typeface for a shorter pieces of text such as headlines.

Display typefaces

is a broad category of fonts that are designed for short form and sometimes for large applications such as posters, logotypes, book covers, and heading in magazines or websites.

They aren’t suitable for body text because they can be really hard to read. These are unique and expressive forms remaining popular in today’s typography.

Monospaced typeface

A monospace font is a font in which each character of it has the same amount of horizontal space. They are very easy to scan, this type of font is often used to write codes because it is easy to spot them with their space in between.

But they have low readability so maybe is not the type of font that you want to use in your product.

Handwriting typeface

This typeface can mimic a person’s handwriting, this is a very casual typeface but it’s better to use it for creative flan.

They are often used to represent a person’s signature while signing an online document. As some typefaces are better to use for a short headline because it has low readability.

What is a font and what makes them unique from typefaces?

The font is a graphical representation that may include different points of size, typeface, weight, design, and color too.

Font weight

The font is sometimes the last thing that we attention to, but it a very important for users.

This refers to the thickness or heaviness of a typeface. Fonts can range from 100-thin to 900-heavy. They have very high readability, which is why regular weight is perfect for reading.

The main types of font weight are: Bold, regular, and thin.

This can improve hierarchy better in a product, for example, the text that you want to grab your users’ attention should be Bold this is commonly used for the headline.

Regular font

This type of font is best described as a neutral and default font, you can see it anywhere in products, books, etc… These are suitable for body text or large text, and they have high readability. A few people used it for a headline but aren’t c

A regular font has no special treatments, such as italic or oblique, thin or bold they are in between which is why it’s the perfect default font that has high readability.

Bold font

This is a set of type characters that are dark and heavy. They can stand out from other fonts, it can grab users’ attention immediately. You have to be careful to use discretion while using this font because if you end up doing everything bold, you end up drawing attention to basically nothing.

Italic font

is a cursive font based on a stylized form of handwriting. They have a common rule with the bold font you should use both of them with discretion.

Italic font is a way to emphasize key points in your product and to do some creative work when quoting a speaker.

Italics are a way to emphasize key points in a printed text, to identify many types of creative works, cite foreign words or phrases, or when quoting a speaker, a way to show which words they stressed.

After researching I found out the history of this font which this type of font is a very old one which was designed in Italy, to replace documents written in a handwriting style. This font served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography. Aldus Manutius and Ludovico Arrighi both between the 15th and 16th centuries were the main types of designers involved in this process at the mine.

What challenged me today

The introduction to typography was a laborious process, for me to learn about typefaces and fonts. I didn’t know what big role fonts and typefaces have in design, but as I was learning and researching all day, I noticed how important is that the product to be readable by everyone, if the product isn’t readable your product isn’t a successful product.

If a user can’t read content because of the weight or a typeface, it will lead to frustration and it will lead to abandoning the app or web.

After hours of research, I concluded my introduction with typography in this article and I finally learned interesting details about typefaces and fonts.

Forward that I wasn’t clear what is the difference between a typeface and a font. Today at this learning session I acknowledged a lot besides some difficulties. Overcoming my challenges on this path day by day. Rome wasn’t built for a day is that right folks?

Thank you for coming all this way with me. Any feedback or critique is always welcomed by me. :)