THE ANATOMY OF TYPE WORD & IMAGE • CDIL-305 • SPRING 2018 • NICK EDLUND
Apex Stem Stroke Counter Contrast Shoulder Cross Stroke Crossbar
Serif Ascender Arm
Terminal
Bowl Descender
TYPEFACE CLASSIFICATIONS Typeface refers to the appearance of characters. A font is an electronic file that renders a typeface.
SAN SERIF SERIF SLAB SERIF ORNAMENTAL BLACKLETTER SCRIPT HAND SYMBOLS Unsentimental Based on ancient Rugged typefaces Designed to be used Based on the Inspired by formal Replicates casual AKA “Dingbats” are letterforms designed Roman carvings and introduced during the large, grab attention calligraphy of 12th penmanship and cursive or block images and printers for the modern age. featuring flourishes on 19th century with thick, and give character century European calligraphic traditions. handwriting. marks in a font. the ends of strokes. often square serifs. to content. scribes. GUIDELINES Imaginary horizontal lines used to align letterform elements.
Ascenders in some typefaces *are taller than capital letters!
Cap Height
x-Height
Baseline Big slip Descender
Overshoot
GLOSSARY
APEX a point at the top of a letterform where two COUNTER The partially or fully enclosed space SERIF The projections extending off the main strokes TERMINAL The end of a stroke not terminated strokes meet (like at the top of a capital A). within a character. of the characters of the serif category of typefaces. with a serif. ARM/LEG An upper or lower (horizontal or diago- CONTRAST Variation between thick and thin SHOULDER The curved stroke of the h, m, n. VERTEX a point at bottom of a character where two nal) stroke that is attached on one end and free on strokes in a typeface. strokes meet (like the bottom of a V). The opposite STEM The main, typically vertical, stroke of a letter- the other. of Apex. CROSSBAR (or Bar) The horizontal stroke in charac- form, excluding any serifs. ASCENDER A stroke of a lowercase character that ters such as A, H, and f. X-HEIGHT An imaginary guide line marking where STROKE Smallest separate element of a character. extends above the x-height. the heights of the main bodies of lowercase letters The horizontal stroke which Stems, bowls, and arms are strokes. CROSS STROKE align. X-height varies from typeface to typeface and BASELINE The imaginary horizontal line along is crosses the stem of a letterform. SWASH A flourish replacing a terminal or serif. dramatically affects the percieved size of type and the line upon which most letters “sit” and below DESCENDER The part of certain characters (g, j, Apple Chancery below has swashes. its legibility. which descenders extend. p, q, y, and sometimes J) that descends below the BOWL The curved part of a letterform that forms an baseline. interior space called the counter. OVERSHOOT When rounded or pointed element CAP HEIGHT Imaginary guideline marking the of letters like O, A or V extend beyond guidelines, to height of capital letters from the baseline. achieve an optical effect of being the same height as square-shaped letters (H, I, K etc).