Elements of a Font
At its most basic, a font is a collection of letterforms. A very large distinction is that these letterforms are designed to be used and to work together. The design is such that many letterforms are actually composed of the same, or repeating elements—stroke weight, serif brackets, counter spaces. With digital font design, a font also includes things such as kerning tables, which help determine how letters ‘fit’, or are spaced. (See measurements).
A font most often refers to a digital typeface, which can be used at nearly any size, where a typeface, or face, refers to a single size, weight and style of a font.
A well-designed font will have a consistency of design. This design consistency will carry over into a family, but first let's look at what a font may contain. (It is important to note that many digital fonts will NOT contain a lot of what a font MAY contain. Many are designed to be one-trick ponies, having only a very basic set, and are intended as simple display fonts. These fonts generally are of little use to a typographer, but in rare cases come in handy. Need a font designed out of lizard images?)
Many of the characters shown below are not readily apparent when looking at the keyboard. See the special character chart for keyboard combinations. The font used in the examples below is Adobe® Garamond Pro.
Uppercase
All capital letters, some accented vowels, some special (tilde, cedilla) characters.
Lowercase
All lowercse (small) letters, some accented vowels, some special (tilde, cedilla) characters.
Uppercase Numerals
Also called lining numerals, all have the same height as uppercase letters. On the left is the proportional set, which are kerned (notice the alignment in the decimal places), and on the right is the tabular set, which are monospaced, for use in columns and tables.
Lowercase Numerals
Lowercase numerals are also called old style, and are designed to the x-height with ascenders and descenders. Less common than lining numerals, old style numerals are generally more elegant. Again, the proportional set is on the left, and the tabular on the right.
Punctuation and Misc. Characters
All fonts generally contain standard punctuation, but some have quite a bit more. There are also ‘expert’ sets, which are an extended set of miscellaneous characters.
Keep in mind that not all fonts are as extensive as what is shown, and some may contain more characters, such as dingbats, or symbols, swash variations, or ornaments. The particular font used, Adobe® Garamond Pro, is of a new type technology called Open Type, which can contain thousands of characters in a single font file, and which is also platform independent, so you don’t need a different version for Windows and Mac. Being new, the capabilities of Open Type are not available to all software, but when you can use it, such as with InDesign, it is much easier to pursue better typographic design, at least font-wise.
