Q. 2 - What is Font and Typefaces? Explain any five font’s families in DTP.

Ans. – Font: - A font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character

set of a single size and style of a particular typeface. For example, the complete set of all the

characters for "9-point Bulmer" is called a font, and the "10-point Bulmer" would be another

separate font, but part of the same font family, whereas "9-point Bulmer boldface" would be another

font in a different font family of the same typeface. One individual font character might be referred

to as a "sort," "piece of font," or "piece of type". Font nowadays is frequently used synonymously

with the term typeface, although they had clearly understood different meanings before the advent

of digital typography and desktop publishing. Beginning in the 1980s, with the introduction of

computer fonts, a broader definition for the term "font" evolved. Different sizes of a single style

separate fonts in metal type are now generated from a single computer font, because vector shapes

can be scaled freely. "Bulmer", the typeface, may include the fonts "Bulmer roman", "Bulmer

italic", "Bulmer bold" and "Bulmer extended", but there is no separate font for "9-point Bulmer

italic" as opposed to "10-point Bulmer italic".

Font Characteristics:- In addition to the character height, when using the mechanical sense of the

term, there are several characteristics which may distinguish fonts, though they would also depend

on the script(s) that the typeface supports. In European alphabetic scripts, i.e. Latin, Cyrillic and

Greek, the main such properties are the stroke width, called weight, the style or angle and the

character width. The regular or standard font is sometimes labeled roman, both to distinguish it from

bold or thin and from italic or oblique. The keyword for the default, regular case is often omitted for

variants and never repeated, otherwise it would be Bulmer regular italic, Bulmer bold regular and

even Bulmer regular. Roman can also refer to the language coverage of a font, acting as shorthand

for "Western European." Different fonts of the same typeface may be used in the same work for

various degrees of readability and emphasis.

Weight: - The weight of a particular font is the thickness of the character outlines relative to their

height.

Helvetica Neue Weights:- A typeface may come in fonts of many weights, from ultra-light to

extra-bold or black; four to six weights are not unusual, and a few typefaces have as many as a

dozen. Many typefaces for office, Web and non-professional use come with just a normal and a bold

weight. If no bold weight is provided, many renderers (browsers, word processors, graphic and DTP

programs) support faking a bolder font by rendering the outline a second time at an offset, or just

smearing it slightly at a diagonal angle. The base weight differs among typefaces; that means one

normal font may appear bolder than some other normal font. For example, fonts intended to be used

in posters are often quite bold by default while fonts for long runs of text are rather light. Therefore

weight designations in font names may differ in regard to the actual absolute stroke weight or

density of glyphs in the font. Attempts to systematize a range of weights led to a numerical

classification first used by Adrian Frutiger with the Universe typeface: 35 Extra Light, 45 Light, 55

Medium or Regular, 65 Bold, 75 Extra Bold, 85 Extra Bold, 95 Ultra Bold or Black. Deviants of

these were the "6 series" (italics), e.g. 46 Light Italics etc., the "7 series" (condensed versions), e.g.

57 Medium Condensed etc., and the "8 series" (condensed italics), e.g. 68 Bold Condensed Italics.

From this brief numerical system it is easier to determine exactly what a font's characteristics are,

for instance "Helvetica 67" (HE67) translates to "Helvetica Bold Condensed". The TrueType font

format introduced a scale from 100 through 900, where 400 is regular (roman or plain), which is

also used in CSS and Open Type. The first algorithmic description of fonts was perhaps made by

Donald Knuth in his Meta font and TeX system of programs. There are many names used to

describe the weight of a font in its name, differing among type foundries and designers, but their

relative order is usually fixed, something like this:

a. Hairline

b. Thin

c. Ultra-light

d. Extra-light

e. Light

f. Book

g. Normal / regular / roman / plain

h. Medium

i. Demi-bold / semi-bold

j. Bold

k. Extra-bold / extra

l. Heavy

m. Black

n. Extra-black

o. Ultra-black / ultra

The terms normal, regular and plain, sometimes also book, are being used for the standard weight

font of a typeface. Where both appear and differ, book is often lighter than regular, but in some

typefaces it is bolder.

Slope: - In contemporary European typefaces, especially roman ones, the font style is usually

connected to the angle. When the normal, roman or upright font is slanted—usually to the right in

left-to-right scripts—the lowercase character shapes change slightly as well, approaching a more

handwritten, cursive style. In this italic type, character edges may even connect and ligatures are

more common. In many typefaces uppercase letters are merely slanted in italic fonts, but in some

they change their appearance, too, e.g. by gaining swashes. Although rarely encountered, a

typographic face may be accompanied by a matching calligraphic face (cursive, script), which might

be considered a further font style of one typeface.

Cyrillic Italics:- In many sans-serif and some serif typefaces, especially in those with strokes of

even thickness the characters of the italic fonts are only slanted, which is often done algorithmically,

without otherwise changing their appearance. Such oblique fonts are not true italics, because they

lack the change in letter shapes which is part of the definition of italic. On the other hand, there are

typefaces with upright characters that take a more cursive form without a change in angle. For

example the Cyrillic minuscule ‘т’ may look like a smaller form of its majuscule ‘Т’ or more like a

roman small ‘m’ as in its standard italic appearance; in this case the distinction between styles is

also a matter of local preference. In Frutiger’s nomenclature the second digit for upright fonts is a 5,

for italic fonts a 6 and for condensed italic fonts an 8. The two Japanese syllabifies, katakana and

hiragana, are sometimes seen as two styles or typographic variants of each other, but usually are

considered separate character sets as a few of the characters have separate kanji origins. The gothic

style of the roman script with broken letter forms, on the other hand, is usually considered a mere

typographic variant. Cursive-only scripts such as Arabic also have different styles, in this case for

example Naskh and Kufic, although these often depend on application, area or era. There are other

aspects that can differ among font styles, but more often these are considered immanent features of

the typeface. These include the look of digits (text figures) and the minuscule, which may be smaller

versions of the capital letters (small caps) although the script has developed characteristic shapes for

them. Some typefaces do not include separate glyphs for the cases at all, thereby abolishing the

bicamerality. While most of these use uppercase characters only, some labeled unicase exist which

choose either the majuscule or the minuscule glyph at a common height for both characters?

Width: - Some typefaces include fonts that vary the width of the characters (stretch). Narrower

fonts are usually labeled compressed, condensed or narrow. In Frutiger’s system, the second digit of

condensed fonts is a 7. Wider fonts may be called wide, extended or expanded. Both can be further

classified by prepending extra, ultra or the like. These separate fonts have to be distinguished from

techniques that alter the letter-spacing to achieve narrower or smaller words, especially for justified

text alignment. Most typefaces either have proportional or mono spaced (i.e. typewriter-style) letter

widths, if the script provides the possibility. There are, however, super families covering both styles.

East-Asian sonograms some fonts provide both proportional and fixed-width (tabular) digits, where

the former usually coincide with lowercase text figures and the latter with uppercase lining figures.

Optimal Size: - Some professional digital typefaces include fonts that are optimized for certain

sizes, e.g. by using ink traps. There are several naming schemes for such variant designs. One such

scheme, invented and popularized by Adobe Systems, refers to the variant fonts by the applications

those are typically used for, with the exact point sizes intended varying slightly by typeface:

Poster

Extremely large sizes, usually larger than 72 point

Display

Large sizes, typically 19–72 point

Subhead

Large text, typically about 14–18 point

(Regular)

Usually left unnamed, typically about 10–13 point

Small Text (Sm Text)

Typically about 8–10 point

Caption

Very small, typically about 6–8 point

Metrics: - Font metrics refers to metadata consisting of numeric values relating to size and space in

the font overall, or in its individual glyphs. Font-wide metrics include cap height, x-height, ascender

height, descended depth, and the font bounding box. Glyph-level metrics include the glyph

bounding box, the advance width (the proper distance between the glyph's initial pen position and

the next glyph's initial pen position), and side bearings (space that pads the glyph outline on either

side).

Serifs: - Although most typefaces are characterized by their use of serifs, there are super families

that incorporate serif (antiqua) and sans-serif (grotesque) or even intermediate slab serif (Egyptian)

or semi-serif fonts with the same base outlines. A more common font variant, especially of serif

typefaces, is that of alternate capitals. They can have swashes to go with italic minuscules or they

can be of a flourish design for use as initials (drop caps).

Type Faces: - A typeface is a set of characters that share common design features. Each typeface is

designed, and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being

developed constantly. The art and craft of designing typefaces is called type design. Designers of

typefaces are called type designers. In digital typography, type designers are sometimes also called

font developers or font designers. Every typeface is a collection of glyphs, each of which represents

an individual letter, number, punctuation mark, or other symbol. The same glyph may be used for

characters from different scripts, e.g. Roman uppercase A looks the same as Cyrillic uppercase А

and Greek uppercase alpha. There are typefaces tailored for special applications, such as map-

making or astrology and mathematics. The term typeface is frequently confused with the term font.

Before the advent of digital typography and desktop publishing, the two terms had more clearly

understood meanings? See font for a complete definition of that term. As the range of typeface

designs increased and requirements of publishers broadened over the centuries, fonts of specific

weight (blackness or lightness) and stylistic variants (most commonly regular or roman as distinct to

italic, as well as condensed) have led to font families, collections of closely related typeface designs

that can include hundreds of styles. A font family is typically a group of related fonts which vary

only in weight, orientation, width, etc., but not design. For example, Times is a font family, whereas

Times Roman, Times Italic and Times Bold are individual fonts making up the Times family. Font

families typically include several fonts, though some, such as Helvetica, may consist of dozens of

fonts. The distinction between font and typeface is that a font designates a specific member of a type

family such as roman, boldface, or italic type, while typeface designates a consistent visual

appearance or style which can be a "family" or related set of fonts. For example, a given typeface

such as Arial may include roman, bold, and italic fonts. In the metal type era, a font also meant a

specific point size, but with digital scalable outline fonts this distinction is no longer valid, as a

single font may be scaled to any size. The first "extended" font families, which included a wide

range of widths and weights in the same general style emerged in the early 1900s, starting with

ATF's Cheltenham (1902–1913), with an initial design by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, and many

additional faces designed by Morris Fuller Benton. Later examples include Future, Lucida, and ITC

Officinal. Some became super families as a result of revival, such as Linotype Syntax, Linotype

Univers; while others have alternate styling designed as compatible replacements of each other,

such as Compatible, Generis. Typeface super families began to emerge when foundries began to

include typefaces with significant structural differences, but some design relationship, under the

same general family name. Arguably the first super family was created when Morris Fuller Benton

created Clear face Gothic for ATF in 1910, a sans serif companion to the existing (serifed) Clear

face. The super family label does not include quite different designs given the same family name for

what would seem to be purely marketing, rather than design, considerations: Caslon Antique, Future

Black and Future Display are structurally unrelated to the Caslon and Future families, respectively,

and are generally not considered part of those families by typographers, despite their names.

Additional or supplemental glyphs intended to match a main typeface have been in use for centuries.

In some formats they have been marketed as separate fonts. In the early 1990s, the Adobe Systems

type group introduced the idea of expert set fonts, which had a standardized set of additional glyphs,

including small caps, old style figures, and additional superior letters, fractions and ligatures not

found in the main fonts for the typeface. Supplemental fonts have also included alternate letters such

as swashes, dingbats, and alternate character sets, complementing the regular fonts under the same

family. However, with introduction of font formats such as Open Type, those supplemental glyphs

were merged into the main fonts, relying on specific software capabilities to access the alternate

glyphs. Since Apple's and Microsoft's operating systems supported different character sets in the

platform related fonts, some foundries used expert fonts in a different way. These fonts included the

characters which were missing on either Macintosh or Windows computers, e.g. fractions, ligatures

or some accented glyphs. The goal was to deliver the whole character set to the customer regardless

of which operating system was used. The size of typefaces and fonts is traditionally measured in

points; point has been defined differently at different times, but now the most popular is the Desktop

Publishing point of 1⁄72 in (0.0139 in/0.35 mm). When specified in typographic sizes (points, kyus),

the height of an em-square, an invisible box which is typically a bit larger than the distance from the

tallest ascender to the lowest descender, is scaled to equal the specified size. For example, when

setting Helvetica at 12 point, the em square defined in the Helvetica font is scaled to 12 points or 1⁄6 in (0.17 in/4.3 mm). Yet no particular element of 12-point Helvetica need measure exactly 12

points. Frequently measurement in non-typographic units (feet, inches, and meters) will be of the

cap-height, the height of the capital letters. Font size is also commonly measured in millimeters

(mm) and as (a quarter of a millimeter, kyu in romanized Japanese) and inches.

Digital Type: - Digital fonts store the image of each character either as a bitmap in a bitmap font, or

by mathematical description of lines and curves in an outline font, also called a vector font. When

an outline font is used, a rasterizing routine (in the application software, operating system or printer)

renders the character outlines, interpreting the vector instructions to decide which pixels should be

black and which ones white. Rasterization is straightforward at high resolutions such as those used

by laser printers and in high-end publishing systems. For computer screens, where each individual

pixel can mean the difference between legible and illegible characters, some digital fonts use hinting

algorithms to make readable bitmaps at small sizes. Digital fonts may also contain data representing

the metrics used for composition, including kerning pairs, component creation data for accented

characters, glyph substitution rules for Arabic typography and for connecting script faces, and for

simple everyday ligatures like fl. Common font formats include TrueType, Open Type and

PostScript Type 1, while METAFONT is still used by TeX and its variants. Applications using these

font formats, including the rasterizers, appear in Microsoft and Apple Computer operating systems,

Adobe Systems products and those of several other companies. Digital fonts are created with font

editors such as Font Forge, RoboFont, Glyphs, Font lab’s Type Tool, Font Lab Studio,

Fontographer, or Asia Font Studio.

Types of Typefaces:- Illustration of different font types and the names of specific specimens

Because an abundance of typefaces have been created over the centuries, they are commonly

categorized according to their appearance. At the highest level (in the context of Latin-script fonts),

one can differentiate Roman, Black letter, and Gaelic types. Roman types are in the most

widespread use today, and are sub-classified as serif, sans serif, ornamental, and script types.

Historically, the first European fonts were black letter, followed by Roman serif, then sans serif and

then the other types. The use of Gaelic faces was restricted to the Irish language, though these form

a unique if minority class. Typefaces may be Moonscape regardless of whether they are Roman,

Black letter, or Gaelic. Symbol typefaces are non-alphabetic. The Cyrillic script comes in two

varieties, Roman type and traditional Slavonic type.

1. Roman typefaces

Serif typefaces:- Serif, or Roman, typefaces are named for the features at the ends of their strokes.

Times Roman and Garamond are common examples of serif typefaces. Serif fonts are probably the

most used class in printed materials, including most books, newspapers and magazines. Serif fonts

are often classified into three subcategories: Old Style, Transitional, and Modern. Old Style

typefaces are influenced by early Italian lettering design. Though some argument exists as to

whether Transitional fonts exist as a discrete category among serif fonts, Transitional fonts lie

somewhere between Old Style and Modern style typefaces. Transitional fonts exhibit a marked

increase in the variation of stroke weight and a more horizontal serif compared to Old Style, but not

as extreme as Modern. Lastly, Modern fonts often exhibit a bracketed serif and a substantial

difference in weight within the strokes. Sample text in Baskerville font

Examples of these are Times, New Baskerville, and Bodoni, respectively.

Roman, italic, and oblique are also terms used to differentiate between upright and italicized

variations of a typeface. The difference between italic and oblique is that the term italic usually

applies to serif faces, where the letter forms are redesigned.

2. Sans serif typefaces

Sans serif: - Sans serif (lit. without serif) designs appeared relatively recently in the history of type

design. The evolution of the sans serif font very likely stemmed from the slab serif font. The earliest

slab serif font, Antique, later renamed Egyptian, designed in 1815 by the English type founder

Vincent Figgins was succeeded one year later by the first sans serif font, created by William Caslon

IV. The evidence of this is clearly shown in the uniform strokes in the letter forms. Sans serif fonts

are commonly but not exclusively used for display typography such as signage, headings, and other

situations demanding legibility above high readability. The text on electronic media offers an

exception to print: most web pages and digitized media are laid out in sans serif typefaces because

serifs often detract from readability at the low resolution of displays.

A well-known and popular sans serif font is Max Mie dinger’s Helvetica, popularized for desktop

publishing by inclusion with Apple Computer's LaserWriter laser printer and having been one of the

first readily available digital typefaces. Arial, popularized by Microsoft, is a widely used sans serif

font that is often compared to and substituted for Helvetica. Other fonts such as Future, Gill Sans,

Universe and Frutiger have also remained popular over many decades.

3. Ornamental typefaces: - Ornamental (also known as novelty or sometimes display) typefaces

are used exclusively for decorative purposes, and are not suitable for body text. They have the most

distinctive designs of all fonts, and may even incorporate pictures of objects, animals, etc. into the

character designs. They usually have very specific characteristics (e.g., evoking the Wild West,

Christmas, horror films, etc.) and hence very limited uses. See below for the historical definition of

display typeface.

4. Mimicry typefaces:- Foreign branding Simulated Hebrew.

Represent the characters of the Roman alphabet but evoke another writing system. This group

includes typefaces designed to appear as Arabic, Chinese characters, Cyrillic, Indic scripts, Greek,

Hebrew, Kana, or Thai. These are used largely for the purpose of novelty to make something appear

foreign.

5. Black letter typefaces

Black letter:- Black letter fonts, the earliest typefaces used with the invention of the printing press,

resemble the black letter calligraphy of that time. Many people refer to them as gothic script.

Various forms exist including textual is, rotunda, schwabacher, and fraktur.

6. Gaelic typefaces

Gaelic type:- Gaelic fonts were first used for the Irish language in 1571, and were used regularly

for Irish until the early 1960s, though they continue to be used in display type and type for signage.

Their use was effectively confined to Ireland, though Gaelic typefaces were designed and produced

in France, Belgium, and Italy. Gaelic typefaces make use of insular letterforms, and early fonts

made use of a variety of abbreviations deriving from the manuscript tradition. Early fonts used for

the Anglo-Saxon language, also using insular letterforms, can be classified as Gaelic typefaces,

distinct from Roman or Antiqua typefaces. Various forms exist, including manuscript, traditional,

and modern styles, chiefly distinguished as having angular or uncial features.

7. Monospaced typefaces

Monospaced font: - Mono spaced fonts are typefaces in which every glyph is the same width (as

opposed to variable-width fonts, where the w and m are wider than most letters, and the I is

narrower). The first mono spaced typefaces were designed for typewriters, which could only move

the same distance forward with each letter typed. Their use continued with early computers, which

could only display a single font. Although modern computers can display any desired typeface,

mono spaced fonts are still important for computer programming, terminal emulation, and for laying

out tabulated data in plain text documents. Examples of mono spaced typefaces are Courier, Prestige

Elite, Fixedsys, and Monaco. There exist Roman, Black letter, and Gaelic mono spaced typefaces.

8. Symbol typefaces

Dingbat:- Symbol, or Dingbat, typefaces consist of symbols (such as decorative bullets, clock

faces, railroad timetable symbols, CD-index, or TV-channel enclosed numbers) rather than normal

text characters. Examples include Zapf Dingbats, Sonata, and Wingdings.

9. CJK typefaces: - CJK, or Chinese, Japanese and Korean typefaces consist of wide ranging sets

of glyphs. They include all of the ASCII, European Roman glyphs and Cyrillic glyphs and often

Persian, Hebrew and Arabic. Most uniquely, however their native character sets' glyphs are

designed to fit within a square. This is somewhat similar to monospaced type faces, but allows for

vertical, horizontal, right-to-left and left-to-right orientation. They also include a set of Extended

Latin characters with glyphs and metrics redesigned for the square in addition to the standard

variety. This commonly results in complex, often conflicting rules and conventions of mixing

languages in type.

10. Mincho

Mincho:- With CJK typefaces, Mincho style tends to be something like Serifs for the end of stems,

and in fact includes Serifed glyphs for Extended Latin and Cyrillic sets within a typeface.

11. Gothic: - With CJK typefaces, Goth style tends to be something like Sans Serifs with squarish,

cut off end-caps for the end of stems, and in fact includes Sans Serif glyphs for Extended Latin and

Cyrillic sets within a typeface.

12. Maru: - With CJK typefaces, Maru style tends to be something like Sans Serifs with rounded

end-caps for the end of stems, and in fact includes Rounded Sans Serif glyphs for Extended Latin

and Cyrillic sets within a typeface.

Display type:- Display type refers to the use of type at large sizes, perhaps 30 points or larger.

Some typefaces are considered useful solely at display sizes, and hence are known as display faces.

For typefaces used across a wide range of sizes, in the days of metal type, each size was cut

individually, or even if pant graphically scaled would often have adjustments made to the design for

larger or smaller sizes, making a "display" face have distinct differences. In metal type, if present in

smaller sizes, ink traps (small indentations at the junctions of letter strokes) would be eliminated at

display sizes. In smaller point sizes, these ink traps were intended to fill up when the letterpress was

over-inked, providing some latitude in press operation while maintaining the intended appearance of

the type design. At larger sizes, these ink traps were not necessary, so display faces did not have

them. Today's digital typefaces are most often used for offset lithography, electro photographic

printing or other processes that are not subject to the ink supply variations of letterpress, so ink traps

have largely disappeared from use. When digital fonts feature a display variation, it is to

accommodate other stylistic differences that may benefit type used at larger point sizes. Such

differences, which were standard in metal type, are rare in digital type, outside of the very high end

of type design. They can include: a lower x-height, higher contrast between thick and thin strokes,

less space between letters, and slightly more condensed letter shapes. Decades into the desktop

publishing revolution, few typographers with metal foundry type experience are still working, and

few digital typefaces are optimized specifically for different sizes, so the misuse of the term display

typeface as a synonym for ornamental type has become widespread; properly speaking, ornamental

typefaces are a subcategory of display typefaces.

Texts used to demonstrate typefaces: - A sentence that uses the entire alphabet (a pangram), such

as "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", is often used as a design aesthetic tool to

demonstrate the personality of a typeface's characters in a setting (because it displays all the letters

of the alphabet). For extended settings of typefaces graphic designers often use nonsense text

(commonly referred to as greeting), such as lorem ipsum or Latin text such as the beginning of

Cicero's In Catilinam. Greeking is used in typography to determine a typeface's color, or weight and

style, and to demonstrate an overall typographic aesthetic prior to actual type setting.

Five Font’s Families of DTP.

1. Times New Roman:- This family includes Times New Roman (roman, bold), Times New

Roman Medium (roman, bold), Times New Roman Semi Bold (roman, bold), Times New Roman

Bold (roman, bold), Times New Roman Extra Bold, Times New Roman PS (roman, bold, italics),

Times New Roman Condensed (roman, bold, italic), Times New Roman Small Text (roman, bold,

italic), Times New Seven (roman, bold, italics). Times New Roman is a serif typeface

commissioned by the British newspaper the Times in 1931, created by Victor Lardent at the English

branch of Monotype. It was commissioned after Stanley Morison had written an article criticizing

The Times for being badly printed and typographically antiquated. The font was supervised by

Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times.

Morison used an older font named Plantin as the basis for his design, but made revisions for

legibility and economy of space. Morison's revision became known as Times New Roman and made

its debut in the 3 October 1932 issue of The Times newspaper. After one year, the design was

released for commercial sale. The Times stayed with Times New Roman for 40 years, but new

production techniques and the format change from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004 have caused the

newspaper to switch font five times since 1972. However, all the new fonts have been variants of

the original New Roman font. Some experts believe that the design was based on an earlier original

work of William Starling Burgess. This theory remains controversial. Because of its popularity, the

typeface has been influential in the subsequent development of a number of serif typefaces both

before and after the start of the digital-font era. One notable example is Georgia, shown below on

the right, which has very similar stroke shapes to Times New Roman but wider serifs. Although no

longer used by The Times, Times New Roman is still frequent in book typography, particularly in

mass-market paperbacks in the United States. Especially because of its adoption in Microsoft

products, it has become one of the most widely used typefaces in history.

Times New Roman WGL: - It includes fonts in WGL character sets, and only sold in TrueType

format. It includes Times New Roman regular, bold, italic, bold italic.

Times New Roman World: - It is a version based on Windows Vista fonts. It includes fonts in

WGL character sets, Hebrew, Arabic characters. Similar to Helvetica World, Arabic in italic fonts is

in roman positions.

2. Arial: - Arial, sometimes marketed or displayed in software as Arial MT, is a sans-serif typeface

and set of computer fonts. Fonts from the Arial family are packaged with all versions of Microsoft

Windows, some other Microsoft software applications, Apple Mac OS X and many PostScript 3

computer printers. The typeface was designed in 1982 by a 10-person team, led by Robin Nicholas

and Patricia Saunders, for Monotype Typography. The Arial typeface comprises many styles:

Regular, Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Black, Black Italic, Extra Bold, Extra

Bold Italic, Light, Light Italic, Narrow, Narrow Italic, Narrow Bold, Narrow Bold Italic,

Condensed, Light Condensed, Bold Condensed, and Extra Bold Condensed. The extended Arial

type family includes even more styles: Rounded (Light, Regular, Bold, Extra Bold); Mono spaced

(Regular, Oblique, Bold, Bold Oblique). Many of these have been issued in multiple font

configurations with different degrees of language support. The most widely used and bundled Arial

fonts are Arial Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, along with the same styles of Arial Narrow, plus

Arial Black and Black Italic. More recently Arial Rounded has also been widely bundled.

Design characteristics:- Embedded in version 3.0 of the Open Type version of Arial is the

following description of the typeface:

Contemporary sans serif design, Arial contains more humanist characteristics than many of its

predecessors and as such is more in tune with the mood of the last decades of the twentieth century.

The overall treatment of curves is softer and fuller than in most industrial style sans serif faces.

Terminal strokes are cut on the diagonal which helps to give the face a less mechanical appearance.

Arial is an extremely versatile family of typefaces which can be used with equal success for text

setting in reports, presentations, magazines etc, and for display use in newspapers, advertising and

promotions. In 2005, Robin Nicholas said "It was designed as a generic sans serif; almost a bland

sans serif." The letter shapes of Arial are based on Monotype Grotesque. Subtle changes and

variations were made to both the letterforms and the spacing between characters in order to make it

more readable at various resolutions. The changes cause the typeface to nearly match Linotype

Helvetica in both proportion and weight (see figure), and perfectly match in width. Nevertheless,

there are differences. One columnist observed "Arial was drawn more rounded than [Helvetica], the

curves softer and fuller and the counters more open. The ends of the strokes on letters such as c, e, g

and s, rather than being cut off on the horizontal, are terminated at the more natural angle in relation

to the stroke direction." The styling of Arabic glyphs comes from Times New Roman, which have

more varied stroke widths than the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic glyphs found in the font. Arial Unicode

MS uses monotone stroke widths on Arabic glyphs, similar to Tahoma. The Cyrillic, Greek and

Coptic Spacing Modifier Letters glyphs initially introduced in Arial Unicode MS, but later debuted

in Arial version 5.00, have different appearances.

3. Helvetica: - Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface

designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max

Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) of

Münchenstein, Switzerland. Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete

with the successful Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, its

design was based on Schelter-Grotesk and Haas’ Normal Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to

create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used

on a wide variety of signage. When Linotype adopted Neue Haas Grotesk (which was never planned

to be a full range of mechanical and hot-metal typefaces) its design was reworked. After the success

of Universal, Arthur Ritzel of Stempel redesigned Neue Haas Grotesk into a larger family. In 1960,

the typeface's name was changed by Haas' German parent company Stempel to Helvetica in order to

make it more marketable internationally. It was initially suggested that the type be called 'Helvetia'

which is the original Latin name for Switzerland. This was ignored by Eduard Hoffmann as he

decided it wouldn't be appropriate to name a type after a country. He then decided on 'Helvetica' as

this meant 'Swiss' as opposed to 'Switzerland'.

4. Liberation fonts: - Liberation is the collective name of four TrueType font families: Liberation

Sans, Liberation Sans Narrow, Liberation Serif and Liberation Mono. These fonts are metric-

compatible with Monotype Corporation's Arial, Arial Narrow, Times New Roman, and Courier

New (respectively), the most commonly used fonts on Microsoft Windows operating system and

Office suite.

Characteristics: - Liberation Sans, Liberation sans Narrow and Liberation Serif closely match the

metrics of Monotype Corporation fonts Arial, Arial Narrow and Times New Roman, respectively.

Liberation Mono is styled closer to Liberation sans than Monotype's Courier new, though its metrics

match with Courier New. The Liberation fonts are intended as free, open-source replacements of the

aforementioned closed source fonts.

5. Verdana: - Verdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft

Corporation, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at Monotype. Demand for such a

typeface was recognized by Virginia Howlett of Microsoft's typography group. The name

"Verdana" is based on a portmanteau of verdant (something green), and Ana (the name of Howlett's

eldest daughter.