[Timothy] Morton calls global warming a “hyperobject,” something that is “massively distributed in time and space relative to humans.” Such objects are more giant than the giant objects of megalophobia; they can’t be captured in a photograph or even an abstraction. Time-lapse gifs of melting ice don’t help; their extreme compression only minimizes the impact of what’s happening at actual size. Global warming is happening everywhere all the time, which paradoxically makes it harder to see, compared to something with defined edges. This is part of the reason we have failed to stop it or even slow it down. How do you fight something you can’t comprehend?

— Elisa Gabbert, The Unreality of Memory

Reading this, looking at the aerial-photographs of pyres in Delhi, tense-traversing the length of Kerala in the middle of the pandemic. My prayers are with the very many families weathering private hells and the possibility of unfillable voids. Title.

Here is a pixels-and-ink version of the ‘fonts vs typefaces’ discussion as a printable A4-sized PDF. Feel free to use in a classroom (thankses!), pinned on a board, printed and made a boat out of, wallpapered on a PC (why?), etcetera. 

Download (PDF, 106 KB)

My favourite jury-moment of undiluted confusion is when someone attempts to differentiate between a font and a typeface. That is when I extend the chair on its creaky springloaded extenders and stretch out like a variable font on its widest end and stare at the screen while sipping old-, cold-, dark-tea wishing life was simpler.

Here is an attempt at definitions. (Taken from a variety of sources—listed at the end—and validated with usage in a variety of scenarios.)

LISTICLE-VERSION

1. Concept: A font is the source from which the typeface renders itself.

2a. Object: The font (these days) is the font-file. The typeface is what you see rendered on screen or print or anywhere you set type.

2b. Object: In the early days of exclusively metal-and-wood-type, a font was the metallic-slash-wooden object—of a specific size—engraved with glyphs.

3. Use: The font is what you install and render a typeface with. The typeface is what you use in a poster-brochure-banner-logo to type-set words and other glyphs.

IN DETAIL

Think of a TYPEFACE as the face that the font-file helps one make. It speaks of a distinct design (purpose and intent) and a recognisable similarity in appearance across styles and sizes.[1] So, ‘Domaine Text Regular 10 pt’ is different from ‘Domaine Text Bold 10 pt.’ They are two different type-faces. (Also, if you want to be really pedantic, ‘Domaine Text Bold 10pt’ is a typeface while ‘Domaine Text Bold 50pt’ is another. With digital type that just scales from 10pt to 50pt, this detail doesn’t make much sense anymore. But often, a text or small-size-specific letterform differs in shape from a display or large-size-specific letterform. Look at Domaine Text and Domaine Display. In the metal-type era, these could both be called Domaine, even with all the variations in shapes and contrast. (Think complications in hand-cutting type combined with optical adjustments.) Therefore it would have been necessary to specify the size to really understand what the face looked like. Simply saying ‘Domaine’ would fail to tell us what kind of contrast to expect. The correct—or more pedantic—answer to ‘what typeface?’ in that sense would be ‘Domaine Text Regular 10pt’ and not simply ‘Domaine.’)

If one were less pedantic, ‘Domaine’ is one typeface and ‘Helvetica’ is another, but that fails to specify the appearance well enough. These names could refer very well to complete families of typefaces including versions like regular, semibold, bold, italics, etcetera. So, Domaine is a typeface-family while Domaine Text Bold 15pt is a specific typeface.

That is to say a TYPEFACE FAMILY has a set of typefaces with all kinds of weights and widths and styles (bold, light, regular, condensed, extended, roman, italic, etc.) that share common visual characteristics. For example, the family Helvetica Neue LT contains more than 15 variations (weights, widths, slants). There are SUPERFAMILIES that contain serifs, sans-serifs, slabs, monospaced ones, different scripts, etcetera. (PT Sans, PT Serif, PT Mono, etc., from Google Fonts is an easy-to-find example. The Noto family of typefaces is a good example of a multi-script typeface family.)

A FONT (from fount, as in fount-ain, meaning source in Old English) is the ‘source’ of the information for making a type‘face’ appear on paper or screen (or anywhere). In digital typography, this is the font-file on your computer (as a thing you can cut-copy-paste or upload-download-share). The font (file) has a definite presence (often kilobytes of data) and can be thought of as the software that makes the letters and glyphs appear. All the instructions for making the shapes, spacing the letterforms, replacing specific combinations of letters with a ligature, etcetera, are coded in this file. A variable font lets one change the appearance over defined ranges in addition to letting one pick instances like light or regular or semibold or upright and italic versions of the same. The variable font-file-as-software has set minimum and maximum values for such characteristics. When you license a font, you are paying for the use of such software to make a specific typeface(s) that it helps you make.Websites like Photolettering from House Industries used to let one purchase/license typefaces instead of fonts (words in a specific typeface as outlined shapes) but don’t anymore.

The beauty of this (above) definition of fonts is that it works well for variable fonts as well, by bringing clarity to the sources-origin of the word font.

WHO MAKES THESE THINGS?

Here is an easy distinction to remember. Type-designers design type-faces and font-designers or -foundries make them into usable fonts. Often, these two are the same person(s). A typographer then sets them (free) by using them well.

YE OLDE FONDRE

The other confusing bit comes from the word ‘font’ being a derivative of fondre (French for melt, cast, pour). Font-as-physical-objects matches this definition but doesn’t work that well with digital type. Back in the days of exclusively metal-or-wood-type, the ‘font’ was the metal or wooden blocks of a specific design and size. Not anymore.

TTF, OTF, ETCETERA.

TTF and OTF (and WOFF and WOFF2 and many more) are font formats, much like png and psd if one were to oversimplify. Apart from the differences in how they are drawn (quadratic- versus cubic-or-postscript-curves [2]) TTF and OTF also often render differently on screens (TTFs can be hinted better but it is finally on the OS-es how they render type on screen). These two started out with different capabilities with respect to features like ligatures, stylistic alternates, etcetera but modern versions of OTFs and TTFs are equally capable formats when it comes to these features.

IRL

The correct answer to ‘what font is that?’ could be ‘88FFSeq_34.ttf’ or ‘download-042.otf’ while the correct answer to ‘what typeface is that?’ could be ‘Domaine Text Regular 12pt’ or ‘Domaine Display 42 pt’ or even ‘Domaine Display.’ Just ‘Domaine’ would work too, as long as you are prepared to be judged. In general, the world will not stop making sense if one were to use ‘font’ and ‘typeface’ interchangeably. Just that in doing so, one eschews clarity for ambiguity and has to depend on the listener to decide whatever it means to them.

SOURCES

They’re Not Fonts from AIGA. Alan Haley, 2002. Also, look at that job-description! I am stealing it pronto.

Is it a font or a typeface? from TNW has more perspectives. Harison Weber, 2012.

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PS (Not that kind of Postscript)

The current correct answer to ‘what typeface is exif-the-blog set in?’ is ‘whatever serif your browser defaults to.’ I’ve pared the CSS down to the essentials and the site looks as close to ‘default’ as ever. The only rules are the type size (20px) and the line height (1.5). Since I am a fancy person, the numerals are set to oldstyle. Yes; I’m willing to spend some keybees that way.

—

1: A notable exception is the typeface family History from Typotheque. The only easily recognisable (and useful) similarity is the physical size of each glyph. Yet, this is a distinct (as in clearly defined) design choice.

2: A beautiful explanatory post I always link to in classes is at Scannerlicker. This is almost required-reading for Typography-01, supplemented with discussions.

Been teaching on-and-off (typography with NID-V, mentoring final-year students from NID-K on a brand-identity project) and neglecting most other important things including Exif. I have also been referencing some architecture bits for some potential architecture-ing; I’ve always loved that discipline and consider dropping everything to enroll into a full-fledged program, often. Been reading through 30by40 (I love the LongStudio) and *faircompanies while keeping things local with AtticLab.

What I haven’t been neglecting is feeding Kamal(a) in his habitat (now sans-the-plant thanks to filterlessness). The betta is intelligent and quite angry-slash-excited to see people. I’m extrapolating; he is probably happy seeing other people and is just temporarily pissed off having to deal with me all the time. We got him from one of those shops where bettas are in tiny blue-tinted cups and look space-starved. The tank is large and sits on the other end of our shared work-table, facing the road and its election-related-brouhaha. It looks like there will be more tanks-on-tables soon. Kamal(a) is impossible to photograph; I’ll have to invest in some sports-photography-level gear to catch him sans all the blur.

The past month has been painfully slow and it looks like I would have read far fewer books than the last year by the end of December. It is a depressing thought and the whole working-alone-staring-at-angry-Kamal(a) isn’t helping. Podcasts and non-serious RSS-feeding has helped deal with it. So has a lot of calligraphy practice. I’m loaded with new pens, nibs and inks and cheap-and-perfect-for-fountain-ink papers from Kanakam PaperMart in town. The copperplate practice has helped mitigate some stress (good-joke; copperplate and stress), with random flourishes for extra effect.

Here is a thing I was part of, for Keralappiravi day. (My sunlit mug comes in at around the 3:50–3:51 mark; don’t blink too much or you will miss it.) The rest of the folks are all very good at what they do and it was doubly nice to see a former student of mine in there! (Do they ever become ‘former?’)

This (and the others) illustrates Bodheshwaran’s 1938 song on what makes Kerala, Kerala. My bit reads ‘malayaja-surabhila-marutha-nel-kkum’ and translated, that says touched by the richly sandal-scented breeze. UnniMaman explained the meaning in detail and suggested we shoot against some trees. (He is my first calligraphy-teacher and used to cut normal-tipped sketchpens into chiselled tips as if by magic. These letters reference what I remember from the college magazines he used to lay-out by hand.)

R shot the clips and framed it so the sunlight made it all look presentable. Thanks to GV-sir for the opportunity. Thanks to Somettan and Vijayettan for forcing the coconuts to fall so they didn’t have to on their own, ruining the shoot.

Here is the un-hyphenated (normal? broken?) composition, drawn on cheap-ish chartpaper with a dip-pen and counterfeit Parker Quink. There were so many trials before this one (and after) since I was nervous and the papers kept texturing the letterforms where I didn’t want them to.

Mecha-human-Robot-type-thing. Luxor SuperChisels on parchment as old as third year at NID. Very sad scanner-bed.

Couldn’t sleep and was watching a Doyald Young documentary from Lynda/LinkedIn and listening to fountain pen reviews of Pilot Petits and Platinum Preppy-s. This happened.

Places online from the past couple of weeks. In other words, good ways to procrastinate while feeling relatively good about it all.

Web- (Sites and What They Can Be)

http://varia.zone/en/what-a-website-can-be.html

The Varia piece discussing static websites as a statement of independence is a timely find since I am struggling with a personal web project. (Stacey isn’t supported by the latest PHP updates anymore and the good-ol’ work site is now permanently down. I was looking for a flat-file site generator and am not sure anymore. In other news, this blog now runs the latest version of Bludit with custom styles ported over and database cleaned up. I—still—don’t like the image insertion process and some of the unnecessary styling quirks, though.)

A Sunlit Magazine

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html

LowTech Mag’s solar website is run on sunlight and some really nice basic styles. The page background doubles as a battery-level indicator. I love the articles and the way the quotes are treated too. The bit on typography in the site is rather lovely in its Bringhurst-ness. Makes me want to order an RPi4 and some cables.

Back-to-the-LAN

https://www.are.na/blog/the-internet's-back-to-the-land-movement

This article is the proverbial mouth to this specific rabbithole I have been in. The references are all worth your time and so is are.na for its eclectic collections and ways of inteconnecting them. I went from here to low-fi camera-hacks and back in fewer minutes than it takes to say lo-fi.

Yamatomichi Stories

https://www.yamatomichi.com/products/34702/

I love the way Yamatomichi’s product pages are presented. They are genuine stories with width and depth and loads of fun once you translate the pages. The Cheap-Hike journal articles are gold, too.

Huaraches

http://408ownworks.hatenablog.com/

The 408OwnWorks website is something I wish I had come across when in my own-huaraches-phase (post reading Born-to-Run).

Typography Again

My course with NID-V kids is starting later, after a week from the original schedule. We start by the end of October now. Had some fun putting a materials page up here on Exif. I can empathise with how too much online learning fatigues people. Mine are—I think—more off- than on-line when it comes to most days. Here is how we dealt with an on-line timetable for the last week of course the last time (which was also the first time).

It’s been a while since I cracked that joke. Lovely sunset somewhere.