Four Ways to Mix Fonts

I read a great article in NYT a few months ago about font designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones (the guys who brought us Obama's Gotham font), and their efforts in the brave and challenging new world of designing fonts for digital media. For example, because of lower screen resolution, they do things like chisel out little notches where lines intersect and make enclosed white spaces in characters bigger to make the font more legible. I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.

Hoefler and Frere-Jones recently posted a four step guide to mixing fonts.

[I wonder what fonts were used in those 20 copies of the Affordable Health Care for America Act.]

mp3 : song :: font : typeface

I have never fully understood (nor really tried to understand) the difference between the words font and typeface.

You just use typeface when you want to sound fancy right?

A few design and motion graphic friends of mine have weighed in on the subject, but I've never seen the light. After reading this post on Font Feed, I can say I finally get it, but I reserve the right to misuse either or both words.

They use the the analogy of mp3s and song -

When you talk about how much you like a tune, you don’t say: “That’s a great MP3”. You say: “That’s a great song”. The MP3 is the delivery mechanism, not the creative work; just as in type a font is the delivery mechanism and a typeface is the creative work.

another font pro contends

font is what you use, and a typeface is what you see.

a font is the physical embodiment of a collection of letters, numbers, and symbols, while a typeface is the design of said collection.

so there you have it. and you are really excited that you're reading my blog aren't you?




UPDATE: formatting in Blogger is THE WORST (that's right, google. the worst.). it will take me half of my weekend to make the font color, point size, and line break spacing right in this post. about typography.