[thelist] Classifying Fonts

Matt Patterson matt at reprocessed.org
Fri Jun 1 13:39:54 CDT 2001


On 1/6/01 at 12:32 pm, gina at sitediva.com (Gina K. Anderson) wrote:

> Would any of you share your font classification list with me? Or know
> of a place online where I could get help with this? I've done some
> searching, but no site I found gave much guidance on this. Would
> appreciate any input!

Hee hee! This is an argument that has raged for decades in typography... the current most-preferred system runs like this (if I remember right)

Garalde 
    bembo, garamond, janson, dante [seriffed, with oblique stress in the letterforms and without accented contrast between thicks and thins]

Transitional
    baskerville [seriffed, with vertical stress but still without accented contrast between thicks and thins]

Didone
    bodoni, didot, computer modern ['modern' faces, seriffed with vertical stress and high contrast between thicks and thins]

Slab serif
    Rockwell, glypha [self explanatory...]

Industrial sans
    Akzidenz Grotesk, Monotype Grot 215, franklin gothic [the 'engineered' rather than consciously 'designed' sans serif faces from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries...]

Geometric sans
    Futura, helvetica [typically monoline and constructed from geometric shapes...] 

Humanist sans
    johnston's underground letter, gill sans, scala sans [sans serif faces drawing more directly from calligraphy, often with more variation in thickness]

and then we probably need a f**ked category for all the stuff generated by fontographer wielding alleged post-modernists...

I doubt this helps, because font classification is a mug's game, fit only to be played by crotchety old typographers... IMHO of course...

For what it's worth, I organise alphabetically and pick based on type specs or past experience. 

Matt

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Matt Patterson:
   Student
   Reading University
   Department of Typography & Graphic Communication

   ltu97mp at reading.ac.uk
   
   http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~ltu97mp/

   'Did you make that song up?'
   'Well, I sort of made it up,' said Pooh. 'It isn't Brain.' He went on 
humbly, 'because You Know Why, Rabbit; but it comes to me sometimes.'
   'Ah!' said Rabbit, who never let things come to him, but always went 
and fetched them.




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