What are Fonts and Typefaces?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
1,140 words · ~5 min read
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how boring would it be if all the text on your computer or tablet screen always
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looked the same I mean there's something cool and cyberpunkish about doing
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everything in a console type face but having a wide variety of type faces is
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important to people like designers and developers and anyone who wants to add a
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little Pizzazz to their documents or web pages but hold up for a second why do
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you keep on saying type face aren't those things called fonts although these
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terms have become virtual interchangeable if you want to be super
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super proper a type face is an actual style of a letter such as cabrie aerial
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impact Etc and a font is a specific size
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and variation such as bold or italic but since most people in the modern era are
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just fine calling type faces fonts
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that's what we'll be doing for the rest of this video now the idea of using
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different fonts for different applications has been around for
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centuries long before the ad of digital word processing although back in the day
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changing fonts meant changing metallic movable type in a typewriter or printing
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press often a much more tedious process
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than just pointing and clicking it's a good thing too that switching fonts has
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become so easy since they've obviously had a ton of variation in fonts just
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think about how different Times New Roman and wingdings are or how whether
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to use serif or Sans serif fonts has become an important design Choice by the
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way serfs are those little lines at the edges of letters that some people
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believe makes printed text easier to read different fonts has also been
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proven to have certain psychological effects on the people that see them so
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let us know in the comments down below if you'd like to see a future video on
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things like why comic sanss is so hated and produces anger in people that read
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it and why hipsters have such an affinity for helvetica but trying to
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work with so many different fonts wasn't always easy like on earlier PCS unlike
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old-fashioned typewriters where you knew exactly what you were getting as soon as
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the letter was printed on the paper older computers used bitmap fonts that
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essentially stored letters as small bitmapped images although this strategy
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did save on processing power this also made fonts suffer from aliasing or
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jaggies when you increased their size if you used an older Macintosh you might
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remember how this was particularly prevalent in the Old Chicago font that
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Apple used heavily but as processing power grew the industry started shifting
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towards Vector fonts in formats such as true type and open type which allowed
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accurate scaling not just on monitors
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but on printers as well as users started to shift away from Old School Matrix
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printers towards Laser Printers demand grew for being able to see exactly what
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you would get both on screen and on paper which makes sense you see Vector
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fonts are defined not as an arrangement of pixels but as how the lines and
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Curves in each letter relate to one another this means that they can be
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scaled to any size without losing quality most modern fonts are vector
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fonts which you can see yourself by opening a modern web page on a modern
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browser and zooming way in you should
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see smooth lines and curves instead of jaggies pretty cool try to for yourself
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later as LCD monitors became more popular we also saw the rise of
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Technologies like micros soft's clear type which is essentially anti-aliasing
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for fonts even though Vector fonts can be scaled nicely as I just said they can
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look a bit rough on normal size LCDs because modern flat panels have pixels
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fixed at very specific locations on the screen meaning that jaggies can appear
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when characters have to try to fit themselves into these pixels on a grid
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especially on Lower resolution displays this can be a problem clear type and
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other anti-aliasing Tech alleviates the problem by placing lighter colored
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pixels around your letters and you don't even need a Titan X or R9 Fury to run it
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pretty cool of course font technology hasn't been the only thing changing over
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the years since our tastes have evolved as well but no matter what your style is
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you're likely to find something to suit your preferences as there are now
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thousands of freely available to download fonts I just recommend steering
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clear of the aformentioned comic Sands
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unless you haven't gotten tired of Doge jokes yet I haven't so I mean I'm down
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send them to me at Twitter Luke LFR Doge jokes everywhere do it with the
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linda.com tequ and sign up for a 10-day free trial today hope you guys liked
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that video I know it was on like fonts and type faces so if you disliked it let
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me know if you want to see us cover other stuff in the comments down below
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and the psychology of type faces which is something I love because I took a few
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years of human computer interaction courses I would love to make that video
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let me know if you care at all in the comments down below if you guys are like
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