Type Terms

Carl Shank • March 14, 2023

Type and Printing Terminology. When I was employed in a very busy print shop outside of Washington, D.C. customers would come into the shop asking for printing help and advice. Usually, the conversation would go something like this — "I need some invitations to a party I am hosting. What do you recommend?" I would respond by asking what kind of party and who is invited, trying to get some idea as to the type of invitation that would be appropriate. Sometimes I would pull out a sample book of invitations for the customer to peruse.


When I would ask what kind of type they would want, the conversation would continue — "Oh, I don't know. Something that will grab their attention, maybe big type with an illustration or picture." Or, if it was a pamphlet they wanted printed, they would say, "Just make it easy to read." They knew little to nothing about typefaces and fonts or display type and leading and those things typesetters and printers almost take for granted. They did not know the language or enough about printing and typography to guide the conversation or answer a few leading questions. Or, they would produce a piece they received somewhere and ask if we could imitate that in our set up and printing. As I would seek to explain what was involved, there would be a deer-in-the-headlights kind of interaction that would take place. Big, small, medium size, looks nice, easy to read at a distance, similar to what I saw downtown — these would be their guiding hints.


Certainly, everyone needs a bit of education as to typography and printing language. And this not only for those of us in the business, but for inquiring customers and consumers of printed pieces as well. There are good type and printing glossary guides available.* Here's a sampling of what might be helpful the next time you go to the printshop for some help.


*https://www.canva.com/learn/typography-terms/. https://www.monotype.com/resources/z-typographic-terms. Glossary of Typesetting Terms (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing), University of Chicago Press, 2008.

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More on Variable Fonts (2)

By Carl Shank • September 5, 2026
Google’s variable font selection includes IBM Plex Sans, Inter, Newsreader, Open Sans, Playfair Display, Express Fraunces and Roboto. FF Meta Variable is now a licensed font from Monotype (myFonts.com). Formata Variable is a demonstration only font from CARE Typography. We consider two Google Variable typefaces here — Playfair Display and Express Fraunces. Playfair Display Playfair Display is a high-contrast transitional/display serif typeface designed by Claus Eggers Sørensen and released through Google Fonts in 2011. It was designed primarily for large display sizes, especially headlines, titles, and editorial typography. Its appearance draws inspiration from the late eighteenth-century transition from traditional broad-nib writing toward pointed steel pens, as well as from the elegant typefaces associated with the European Enlightenment and neoclassical period. Playfair Display is a contemporary high-contrast serif designed primarily for display typography. Its visual ancestry lies in the 18th-century transitional period, particularly the movement from broad-nib calligraphic forms toward the sharper, more vertical forms that ultimately produced Didot and Bodoni.

More On Variable Fonts

By Carl Shank • September 5, 2026
More On Variable Fonts Open Type Variable Fonts ( REFERENCE ) (Some of this Blog from previous Blog on Dec 9. 2025. See REFERENCE above) Open Type Variable fonts build directly on the technology introduced to TrueType by Apple in the QuickDraw GX graphics environment. Of similar vintage, Adobe’s multiple master format approached similar concepts in a different way. How do we know that Variable Fonts don’t also have a declining future? The need for more compact dynamic webfonts is part of the answer. “Variable fonts also have the potential to enable new kinds of typography for electronic documents, responsive to things like device orientation or even viewing distance. Compact and faster fonts also provide significant advantages for embedding fonts in devices, especially for East Asian (CJK) and other fonts with very large glyph sets and character coverage. The smaller device and disc footprint of variable fonts has been a major factor in encouraging support for the technology in software companies.” ( https://medium.com/variable-fonts ) An Open Type Variable font contains one or more axes that each provide particular variation between different extremes of a typeface design. The format also allows for the possibility of intermediate designs, for the whole glyph set or for individual glyphs, to provide finer control over the design as it changes across the variations design space. Unlike MM fonts, an Open Type Variable font contains only a single set of glyph outlines “and the other extremes or intermediate shapes are defined as deltas from those outlines. So, for example, a font may contain a set of glyph outlines that correspond to the regular weight and width of a typeface, and the lighter, heavier, narrower, and extended designs will be expressed in the font data as movements of outline nodes relative to that outline.” (Medium.com) Any position within the design space can be a named instance. Variable fonts allow a continuous design space containing potentially thousands or millions of possible instances. For typography, this means greater control over hierarchy, responsive design, spacing, readability, branding, and visual expression, while often requiring fewer font files.
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