Typeface design

Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. It is often used synonymously with the term "font design"; technically, font design is the rendering of a typeface design into an entire available family of keyboardable characters, while typeface design is the shaping of individual glyphs, albeit with an eye to the eventual incorporation as a font. For the purposes of this article, the term typeface design will include the design of fonts.

A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production such as handwriting and drawing in that it is the mechanical storage and dispensation of alphanumeric characters. Each of the characters is stored in a master archetype form and then a user, by means of hand picking (handset metal type), a keyboard (linotype and desktop publishing) or other means (voice recognition) selects individual characters to "set" into the text.

The technology of printing text using movable type was invented in China, but the vast number of Chinese characters, and the esteem with which calligraphy was held, meant that few distinctive, complete fonts were created in China in the early centuries of printing.

Gutenberg's most important innovation in the mid 15th century development of his press was not the printing itself, but the casting of Latinate types. Unlike Chinese characters, which are based on a uniform square area, European Latin characters vary in width, from the very wide "M" to the slender "l". Gutenberg developed an adjustable mold which could accommodate an infinite variety of widths. From then until at least 400 years later, type started with cutting punches, which would be struck into a brass "matrix". The matrix was inserted into the bottom of the adjustable mold and the negative space formed by the mold cavity plus the matrix acted as the master for each letter that was cast. The casting material was an alloy usually containing lead, which had a low melting point, cooled readily, and could be easily filed and finished. In those early days, type design had to not only imitate the familiar handwritten forms common to readers, but also account for the limitations of the printing process, such as the rough papers of uneven thicknesses, the squeezing or splashing properties of the ink, and the eventual wear on the type itself.

Beginning in the 1890s, each character was drawn in a very large size for the American Type Founders Corporation and a few others using their technology—over a foot (30 cm) high. The outline was then traced by a Benton pantograph-based engraving machine with a pointer at the hand-held vertex and a cutting tool at the opposite vertex down to a size usually less than a quarter-inch (6 mm). The pantographic engraver was first used to cut punches, and later to directly create matrices.

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