Typefaces and Letter Forms

Serif

The Serif font has flicks, edges, additional lines at the end of the letters. The words also go from thickness of thin to thick and vice versa. The font is widely known as the “Roman” font as the the serif font was carved into stones during the Roman period, this gave the letters the flicks, edges, and thickness etc. Some examples of the Serif font are: Times New Roman, Droid Serif, Tinos.Some examples of books that use this font are:

San Serif

The Sans Serif fonts also known as “Gothic” are generally more consistent with their thickness in the words and they don’t have any flicks, edges at the end of the letters. The term comes from a French word “Sans” which means “without”. This type of font was found in Greek and Latin inscriptions. Some examples of this font are: Impact, Arial, Oswald.

Book covers that use this font are:

Decorative

Decorative type can also be identified as “Display” because of its decorative style. This type of font style highly became popular in the Victorian era during the 19th century and the Art Noveau movement. This type of font is normally only used for decorative type purposes and not headings etc. Some examples of this font are: Gloria Hallelujah, Allerta Stencil, Uniffraktur Magunita.

Some examples of this font on book covers are:

Script

The Script fonts are fonts that look like they have been hand written, they have a very curved, fancy style to them. This type of font was mainly used in the 17th, 18th century and began to be used in the 19th century for things like invitations and diplomas as the script font presented itself in an elegant manner. Some examples of the font are: Pinyon script, Dancing script, Marck script.

Examples of book covers that use this font are:

Book Cover 1

This book cover for The Fault In Our Stars has a hand written and decorative style to it. The letters are broken up and out of shape as they are telling us that the teenagers in the book have a very hard and difficult life as they are both dying from cancer and can’t be together. The black and white clouds are a contrast of the teenagers lives as they can’t be together because of what they’re going throguh.

Book Cover 2

This book cover uses San Serif writing as it is very bold and doesn’t have any of the flicks and edges on the writing. The drawing of the pig suggests to the audience that the book is about animals. The colours on the front cover work very well as they help each other stand out. The writing inside the pig is very rough and uneven which shows us that the lives of the animals are unfair and unequal as this is also shown but the caption inside the pig.