RESEARCH POINT - The Anatomy of a Typeface

The alphabet is only part of a typeface that contains lots of different characters such as numbers, punctuation, mathematical and monetary symbols and ligatures. Ligatures are where two letters are combined together to make printing easier. Explore your computer keyboard to find some of the other characters. You will need to use your shift, alt and ctrl keys.

Choose a magazine, for example the Big Issue or Heat, and look at the main typefaces they use for the body text and headlines. Go to www.identifont.com and use the programme to identify the fonts. Look at the ranges of typefaces all around you and try to identify their distinguishing characteristics. Make notes in your learning log.

Ligatures

After playing with the keyboard to collect different characters like symbols and punctuation, I wanted to find out more about ligatures. I have heard of the term before but I don't really understand how to apply them to my software.

I used Adobe InDesign and the typeface Adobe Caslon Pro. Here I could separate into standard ligatures using the glyphs panel. I found that this only works on open type and serif fonts generally.

Below are the different characters I could find on my keyboard, then the ligatures that I found in my glyphs panel in Adobe InDesign.

Ligatures are special characters created by connecting or combining two or more characters. Ligatures solve the problem of characters overlapping or touching when they are set next to one another. Typical ligatures are the f-ligatures: fi, fl, and sometimes ff, ffi, and ffl. (See Fig.1)

Fig.1 The left-hand column has no ligatures. The middle column shows ligatures in a serif typeface, and the right-hand column shows ligatures in a sans serif face (2018)

In certain typefaces, letter combinations are specially designed to eliminate the unattractive collisions between the hook of the f and the dot of the I, the ascender of the l, or second f. (Strizver, 2014)

Diphthongs

Diphthongs, such as the ae and oe, are one-letter characters, glyphs, or ligatures that contain two vowel forms used for phonetic, rather than aesthetic, reasons. (Poulin, 2017)

Fig.2 Diphthongs (2017)

Discretionary ligatures are decorative in nature and should be used sparingly. A discretionary ligature combines two commonly occurring letters (such as "Th") into a single elegant design. (Strizver, s.d)

Fig.3 Examples of diphthong ligatures are on the left; on the right, discretionary ligatures (2018)

I now have a much better understanding of ligatures and diphthongs and how to use them in text.

Magazine typefaces

This was a frustrating process, every magazine image I uploaded didn't select the correct fonts, although they did at least come up with a close alternative. I used http://www.identifont.com/fontset.html https://www.whatfontis.com/ and https://fonts.adobe.com/ none of them could recognise the National Geographic font. In the end I googled it and the typefaces are Earle and Marden typefaces.

However, in my frustration of looking for the correct typeface I was becoming more aware of what to look for, for example some of the characteristics below:

• Single story or double story

• Horizontal cross-bar

• Straight leg

• Sits on baseline

• A forward or downward spur

• Apex

I researched the types of sub-categories of serif and sans serif typefaces and their different characteristics including the anatomy of a typeface.

Clink on the image to see more.

This helped me a lot, I decided to challenge myself to find the nearest typefaces to match the magazine titles. In doing this I could look at the serifs on the Food & Home magazine for example. What made it more difficult were that the titles were all in capitals and with limited letters I really had to look carefully to see if I was close to finding a better alternative to the font. Also, some titles had really condensed tracking which added more difficulty to identifying the typeface.

Click on the image to see more.

Reflection

I learnt so much from this research point. I have a much better understanding of ligatures and how to insert them into the text if needed. I also found a few short cuts on my keyboard when finding different characters.

The magazine typefaces was much more difficult. In a strange way if the font finder did find the fonts I was looking for I would not have researched further, as it's easier to let the software do the work for you. However, the font finder website did make me think more about how the typefaces are constructed and what to look for in order to try and classify the typefaces into serif or sans serif.

In my research about the fonts used in the various magazines which I had at home, it was sometimes quite difficult to put the typefaces into a group. I really had to look carefully at the anatomy of the type to make sure I was looking for the correct subtle marks like stroke, apex, serifs and stems for example.

I may have put the typefaces into the incorrect classifications, but I have a much deeper understanding of the anatomy of the typeface and feel more confident while looking at where other typefaces belong.

I'm also glad that I tried to find the correct typefaces for the magazine titles. Where I couldn't find the correct typeface, I tried to find one that was very close to the original. This also helped me to find typefaces in the same classification by looking at the anatomy of the typeface.

References

Bibliography.pdf

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