[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/
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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
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