Classifying digital fonts for non-typographers / typography experts

[Laura Franz]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

My first post here, but I could use some community and insight.
I've run into a sticky problem.

I do a lot of thinking and writing about web fonts and web typography.
My audience is primarily people who are interested in learning how to use type on their website/blog, and are not type experts (even if they took some typography classes in college, they may be feeling rusty and in need of help).

I find classifying fonts for non-experts is really hard. (Duh.)

When it comes to serif fonts, I can show them Venetian, Old Style, Transitional, Modern, Slab. I can talk about how changes in materials, techniques, and social/cultural thinking lead to shifts in the forms of letters.

Great.

Then we get to "contemporary" fonts (which is a crappy classification, because next year it's not contemporary anymore. grrrr. I already have to explain that Modern fonts are not Modern and Egyptian fonts are not from Egypt. Let's not make that mistake again, please.)

Most fonts designed since the advent of the mac -- even the ones that are NOT display fonts, but legible, lively text fonts -- do NOT fall neatly into one of the above categories. Even Georgia, which we classify as a Transitional font is, well, quite different from the earlier transitional typefaces.

This is causing a problem (I think it can't just be me) for those of us thinking about, talking about, using web fonts. Why? Because there are a lot of non-type people suddenly looking for fonts and using type! For example, if you go to TypeKit, they categorize their serif fonts by "serif" and "slab serif" -- which makes it really hard to find a serif font because there is so much to wade through.

I want to teach people they can use font classifications to help them "picture" a general "kind" of font they are looking for. (For example, if they were looking for a car, they wouldn't just look for a car. They'd look for a sedan, hatchback, station wagon, convertible, and so on.)

Classification systems can help a designer narrow her search, give voice to what she needs, what she is looking for.

But I've done a pretty exhaustive search, and can not come up with another category already in use that means something like: mixes and matches aspects of earlier periods in font design, doing so in a beautiful, legible, useful new way.

I considered using Elegiac for a while, since Bringhurst uses that as a subclass for postmodern fonts. But Elegiac means "resembling an elegy; expressing sorrow or lamentation" and I think most type designers are not expressing sorrow for earlier periods when designing their fonts/typefaces... I think they are creating new compositions, piecing together approaches (parts, shapes, transitions) in new and beautiful ways.

So I've been kicking around adding a new classification to my vocabulary.

Thinking maybe something like "compositional serif" or "composed serif" (something that could also be applied to sans serif if needed) but neither of these feel right.

I've also thought of sort of cramming these fonts into "Transitional" since Transitional fonts are more about the "idea" of a letter, not as tied to calligraphic forms as Old Style and not as specifically defined as Modern fonts. But frankly, this just feels *wrong.*

Though maybe that's because I see Transitional as a point between two other styles, and I should let that thinking go and instead embrace it as an approach to type design that is valid as a separate entity from Old Style and Modern?

So I'm wondering. Is anybody out there already thinking about this?

Have you created your own language for classifying these "don't quite fit the five families of type" serif fonts... but NOT in a minute detail kind of way? As a type geek, I can totally wrap my mind around a classification system with 50+ ways to subdivide serif fonts alone. But I'm looking more for a general classification. Something that would help a blogger or an in-house web designer think about general categories of kinds of fonts.

Any ideas?

[Nick Shinn]

Historical (“phylogenetic”) designations are not much use, given the sheer number of hybrids, coupled with the vagueness and multiplicity of meanings that has emerged for foundry-generated keywords. Foundries will come up with a dozen keywords for their types (to help potential shoppers gravitate in their direction) and throw in popular terms such as “modern” indiscriminately.

More precise is a taxonomy that is strictly based on physical features such as:

x-height
stroke contrast
curve-shape
serif kind

And so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PANOSE

[hrant]

There sre so many fonts being made by so many different
kinds of people that large groupings are hopeless. So I'm
with Nick on this - break things down to specific formal
characteristics and you can sink your taxonomic teeth
into any font. It does mean however that: you have to do
a lot more work; and you need to try to assign meanings
to each characteristic - for example: narrow ~= elegant
and wide ~= friendly.

hhp

[Riccardo Sartori]

Another approach: https://typography.guru/forums/topic/95976-forwarding

[Laura Franz]

Thanks for the responses. Both the PANOSE system and the various voices on the Font Categories are giving me more to think about. Problem still sticky, but more informed. :-)

[Indra Kupferschmid]

Laura, I can feel your pain and agree with most of what you said. I am thinking about exactly this for the last 14 years and have researched and written about it extensively – in German :/
I just wrote an article for a book in English though and have some entries on my blog. Do I find your email address via the user info? Then I can send you my text if you want.

[Nick Shinn]

Indra, did you have anything to do with the wacky classification system FontFont introduced a few years ago?

[mosh]

I just make classification folders inside my Windows' Explorer (using standard classifications, plus some of my own). Then I try to fit in my fonts according to the category I think is appropriate. At least I get to find my desired fonts in a very quick fashion. As you have already read, font classification is quite elusive and definitely not exact; just as with music.

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f217/moshdesigner/Fontclassification.png

[Richard Fink]

Laura,

As a writer with the same problem, my advice is to give up.
Conceptually, any descriptions you offer will, to the average joe or jane putting together a web site, last about a nanosecond, if that long.
Just put together a cheat sheet with a sample of the basic classifications and leave it at that. Over time, using the cheat sheet, some differences bewtween the main classifications will begin to sink in.
The selection today is so large, finding just the right font is and will remain largely a matter of persistence and serendipity. Unless you want to imitate an existing design, it's mostly a matter of trial and error. Classifications won't help with a darned thing.

My 2 cents.

Rich

[Indra Kupferschmid]

Nick: no. Or which system do you mean? I worked on the FontBook app.