|Major type styles.|
The word “Font” refers to a particular combination of a typeface’s size, weight and style. Thus Arial 12 and Arial 16 should be considered different fonts. What they share is a typeface (font family). Basically, “typeface” is a more proper term to refer to a font family like Helvetica or Courier.
Quite often, although not necessarily, text type would possess serifs due to their ability to accentuate horizontal lines of text helping the eye not to slip.
Illustrators and other visual artists usually deal with way smaller amounts of text, which often requires organizing, prioretizing and accenting. This is where the display types are used. They generally require less work to design (less does not equal little) and are probably the majority. Display types are intended to be used in large sizes, like from 30pt («pt» stands for point here, a typographical unit of size measurement.) They come in all possible shapes and sizes, ranging from reserved to wildly screaming and blurring edge between a letterform and a decorative element. This is a beautiful, fantastic, dizzying world, which makes it important for a designer to not loose the focus.
I'm going to address this issue as well as more details on fonts' classification in the next parts:
2 – Matching the typeface
3 – Display typesetting basics
4 – Historical context factor
5 – Resources and miscellaneous
Following my life's organizational principle abbreviated M.E.S.S. (too lazy to invent the decryption), these parts will be appearing on the blog in the announced order, but through uncertain time intervals, interleaved with other stuff.
Again, my goal here is to announce a topic for research rather than to write a compendium, so at this stage you're probably better off reading more competent sources anyway.