History of Latin type
The rich history of type design and the technical evolution of typesetting are woven into our everyday practice of typography, from how we select fonts to how we use spacing. And while the tools we have today are more capable than ever, designing is still about problem solving. Looking to the challenges and solutions from the past helps give us a deeper understanding of how type works.
Filter lessons by topic
The invention of type
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Transitional faces
Modern type
Display type
From metal to digital
Fitting the line
Justification & hyphenation
The “tight not touching” style
Em
A unit of measurement, 1em is equal to the size of a font. Adjusting font size will resize glyphs relative to the em square.
Weight axis (wght)
An axis found in some variable fonts that controls the font file’s weight parameter.
Optical sizes
Different versions of a typeface optimized for use at specific sizes or size ranges.
Typeface
A typeface is what you see; a font is what you use.
X-height
The height of the lowercase characters that have no ascenders nor descenders, which indicates how tall or short the type appears.
Contrast
The difference between the thick and thin parts of a stroke. A monolinear typeface has low stroke contrast, and is the opposite of a high contrast face.