What is typography

Typography is the way we visualize words. It's not only that of course. It's much more. It is an art and a technique to not only make the words readable but also appealing to the reader. In the modern world, typography has the power to make a reader stay at your webpage or make him turn away. So, we must choose our fonts wisely.

A font family is defined from certain characteristics shared across its letters. You can see some of them in the image on your right (baseline, cap height, letter-spacing (kerning), x-height etc.).

1. Cap Height: it’s the height of the font’s capital letter measure from the baseline
2. X-Height: it’s the height of the lowercase letters (specifically the height of the letter x)
3. Ascenders & descenders: Are found in certain lowercase letters that extend beyond the cap height or the baseline respectively.
4. Weight: is the thickness of the font. Fonts can have various weights (regular, bold, light, extra bold, black, medium, thin etc.).
5. Kerning: refers to the space between the letters
6. Line Height: refers to the space between the baselines

Font Types

Fonts are also categorized in types or type classifications. Some of the common ones are:

• Serif,
• Sans Serif,
• Monospace,
• Handwriting and
• Display

You can find more types in pairfonts.eu category filter at the home page.

Serif

Serif fonts can be recognized by the various small shapes usually at the edges of the letters.

Serif subcategories: Slab Serif, Old-Style, Traditional

Sans Serif

If we translate from French language, we can easily understand that sans-serif means without serif. So, all these small shapes are now gone. Sans serif fonts are usually more simplified, cleaner.

Sans Serif subcategories: Geometric, Humanist, Grotesque

Monospace

All characters have the same width

Handwriting

As the word suggests, it is like someone designed it by hand

Display

Those fonts are usually used at large font sizes, (in the headers).