Font Facts

Carl Shank • January 15, 2021

All About Type

1. SERIF – (in TYPE above) “feet” in French; a small finishing stroke to a letter form that crosses roughly perpendicular to the stroke. Serif type is preferred in text, or “body,” copy because it is more readable in longer sections of type. This is because the letter forms are more distinguishable, and the eye naturally follows the horizontal strokes of the letter forms.


2. SANS SERIF – (in STYLE above) “without feet” in French; a font without serifs. Helvetica is an example of a “sans serif” font. Sans serif type is more legible and often preferred in headlines or what is called “display” copy. It’s uniform strokes help the face to stand out.


3. POINT SIZE – the height of the type body, including the ascenders (cf. 8 ) and the descenders (cf. 6) and extending to a fixed depth below  the descenders. In modern desktop publishing, one point equals 1⁄72 inch.This sample is set in 90 point type.


4. X-HEIGHT – the height of lowercase letters without ascenders or descenders, like the “e” measured from the baseline (cf. 5 ) to the mean line (cf. 9), or top of such letters. X-height becomes important when choosing a typeface, or font, for a particular column width. Wider columns use type with greater x-height, while narrow columns generally require a  typeface with a smaller x-height.


5. BASELINE – an imaginary horizontal line on which the font letters forms rest. Note that for font design purposes, some letter forms, like the "o" fall slightly below the baseline.


6. DESCENDER – the portion of letters like “g,” “j,” “p,” “q,” and “y” that extends below the baseline. It is usually less than the height of an ascender.


7. ITALICS – type that slants to the right, used to set off quotes, book titles and special phrases. Some fonts have what are called “true” italics (like the “e” in TYPE), while others have “oblique” or merely slanted letters (like the “e” in STYLE). Sans serif (cf. 2) in STYLE) letter forms usually have “obliques” for italics.


8. ASCENDER – the portion of a lowercase letter that extends above the mean line (cf. 9).


9. MEAN LINE – the imaginary line at the top of lowercase letters without ascenders or descenders, like the “e” measured from the baseline (cf. 7 ). SEE x-height 4.


10. DINGBATS – small decorative marks, bullets, boxes, or symbols that make up a specialty font; once known as “printer’s flowers.” Here the dingbat is from the typeface known as Zapf Dingbats. Dingbats add “spice” to ads and even some kinds of text copy.

Successful Layout & Design

Calligraphy & Typography

By Carl Shank • September 29, 2025
Calligraphy & Typography. Calligraphy, the art of beautiful handwriting, has a long and rich history that spans cultures, religions, and centuries. It developed not only as a means of communication but also as a form of artistic expression, religious devotion, and cultural preservation. While typography is not calligraphy, with much of type carefully structured, straight-backed and neatly drawn and focused on lettering for printing readability, both art forms involve visual expression of language. Both focus on the shape, proportion and beauty of letters. Both reflect religious, historical and cultural influences on writing styles. Both are used for artistic and decorative purposes in design, and much of type has been greatly influenced by calligraphic styles. Yet, they differ significantly in their methods, purposes and tools. Calligraphy is the art of hand drawn, beautiful writing, while typography focuses on the design and arrangement of type letters for print or digital use. Calligraphy is created manually with pens, brushes, or quills, while type is created digitally or mechanically using typefaces. Traditional tools used in calligraphy include dip pens, brushes and ink, while type is formed with digital or physical lettering. Calligraphy is highly expressive and free flowing, while type is usually uniform and consistent across all characters. Calligraphy is usually done for decorative and personal use, while typography is often constructed and used for mass communication in books, websites and signage. Mediums for calligraphy include paper, parchment, walls, while typography focuses on print and digital media. Yet, the roots of much of type comes from the wealth of history and styling offered by calligraphy. CARE Typography has been able with Font Lab's tools like Fontographer, to translate fine calligraphy into usable typefaces, even for the modern market tastes. The fine art of calligraphy is highlighted in the background to this post in the 2018 calligraphic rendering of the Scripture, "Well done, good and faithful servant" (Matthew 25:25a) by Calligraphy for Christ ( https://www.calligraphyforchrist.com/ ). Such beautiful religious typographic pieces actually begin not with the Gutenberg era in 1450 but with the ancient Chinese.

Early German Typography (Part 2)

By Carl Shank • September 22, 2025
Herbert Hoffmann, Albert Bruckner, Max Hertwig, and Rudolf Koch collaborated on a typographic “atlas” or specimen book titled Hoffmanns Schriftatlas: Das Schriftschaffen der Gegenwart in Alphabeten und Anwendungen (1930) ( Hoffmann’s Type Atlas: Contemporary Type Creation in Alphabets and Applications ) Also distributed in France under the title Alphabets by Herbert Hoffman and other collaborators by Arts et Métiers Graphiques magazine, it is a specimen of alphabets, initials, monograms, logos and other typographic forms from early German typography. The atlas captures typographic modernism in Germany around that time, including influences of the Bauhaus and the modernist movement. It is considered a rich visual record of type and lettering design in that period, showing both experimental and traditional forms. In Part One of this series, we investigated the typography of early Germany through the lens of Rudolf Koch, Louis Oppenheim, E.R. Weiss, Lucian Bernhard, Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens, and Bernard Naudin. In this Part Two we revisit the typography of Ernst Deutsch, Friedrich Heinrichsen, Benjamin Krebs Nachfolger, Maria Ballé, Margarete Leins, Anna Simons and take a brief visit to the Ecole des Arts et Metiers in Stuttgart.
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