Brief 2 - Design Principles - What is a Book?: Research into Question 4 (what clarifies something as a type face and font?)

What is a typeface?

Think of a typeface as the ‘design’ of the design of the alphabet, the shape of the letters 

that make up the typestyle. The letters, numbers, and symbols that make up a design of 

type. So when you say “Arial” or “Garamond” you’re talking about a set of letters in a 

specific style, a ‘typeface’.

What is a font?

Think of a font as the digital file that contains/describes the typeface. Think of the font as a

 little piece of software that tells the computer and printer how to display and print the

typeface.

Adobe’s type glossary description

According to Adobe’s type glossary: “A font is one weight, width, and style of a typeface.

 Before scalable type, there was little distinction between the terms font, face, and family. 

Font and face still tend to be used interchangeably, although the term face is usually more 

correct. A typeface is the letters, numbers, and symbols that make up a design of type. A 

typeface is often part of a type family of coordinated designs. The individual typefaces are 

named after the family and are also specified with a designation, such as italic, bold or 

condensed.

Oftentimes, “Typeface” and “Font” is incorrectly used interchangeably. However, there is a

difference. In the 15th century printers had hand set type, this meant that they had to place

 physical metal letters in a grid to print. Each of these letters was placed in a box with letters

 of the same size: this was a font.

Like this:




However typefaces describe the overall look of the characters contained within the font.

The thickness of the letterforms (the weight) in each font varies, but the defining 

characteristics remain the same. “Typeface” is actually interchangeable with the term, “font 

family.” Below is an illustration that may help better understand this “font” vs “typeface” 

issue. 

Here, you see a family of three twins: John Smith, Jack Smith, and Tom Smith. Each brother 

shares the same face, but their weights vary – read: one is slim, the other is rather rotund.

Together, the brothers make up the Smith family.

Typographically, John, Jack, and Tom are each fonts and together they make up the Smith 

typeface.


“The physical embodiment of a collection of letters, numbers, symbols, etc. (whether it’s a 

case of metal pieces or a computer file) is a font. When referring to the design of the 

collection (the way it looks) you call it a typeface.” – Mark Simonson, designer