Typography is the art of arranging words in a clear, legible, and appealing manner, to relay a specific message to the audience. It involves choosing a typeface and specific fonts to elicit a response from the reader.
In typography, it is common to hear the terms ‘typeface’ and ‘font’ used interchangeably but there is a subtle difference.
Interestingly, in the research there were differing opinions on the exact definitions, but generally each typeface is a collection of characters or glyphs that share common design features.
These collections are usually comprised of an alphabet, upper and lower case letters; numbers, punctuation marks, and some symbols. Typefaces can be a single set or may include multiple sets with different attributes – like bold and italics that create a type family.
Traditionally used in the composition of metal type, Adobe’s type glossary lists a font as “one weight, width and style of a typeface.” The term has transferred to photo and digital typesetting meaning the variation and implementation of particular point size and style.
Font attributes are designated by a large variety of terms. Myfonts offers the Bodini typeface in 14 families each one with multiple fonts.
Basic Typography names can include normal or regular; bold and semibold; poster or black. Italics or oblique and narrow or condensed – all terms you may find in a type family. In addition there are combinations of these terms especially when a type family has numerous fonts. There are also typefaces tailored for special applications, such as mathematics.