What do we have (and expect to have) in a font

Jul 12, 2023 por Pere Farrando

Publishing companies and written media outlets commission typefaces to fulfill their needs. Design studios also need a varied and effective supply of typefaces. Authors, as well, can easily learn how to use digital typography to produce adequate manuscripts intended for different purposes. But, is any typeface fit for any written product?

Typefaces are one key constituent of typographic products, together with another three: writing, composition (or layout) and editing conventions. (I have already written about the latter in this channel: “Editing in editorial design”.

In these abstract terms, it is more adequate to speak of typeface than of font, because a font is ultimately a concrete entity, a file. Good use of terms is something we care about in the Master’s in Editorial Design and Typography.

The role of a typeface in a typographic product lies not only in its morphological features, which are its more outstanding facet, what we see right away. A typeface carries the weight of the layout, and that is why editorial designers, in order to set out the composition of a book, magazine or newspaper, start off by choosing the main typographic family (another term, the same thing). Moreover, typographic writing makes ample use of editing conventions, which also require good code and good glyphs in the fonts.

Typefaces_Editorial_Design

This, in the end, all features and properties of a typeface predetermine what is possible in the other components of a typographic product:

  1. The repertoire of glyphs can limit what can be written with a specific typeface.
  2. The number of OpenType features can hinder or facilitate the use of many editing conventions.
  3. Finally, basic parameters such as kerning, the x-height and the width of the normal interword space can make the work of the editorial designer — and the reader — a joy or something not so pleasurable.

One of the key attributes of the font format — namely and de facto OpenType — is that it allows localizations, that is, script-specific rules. For Romanian writers, for instance (fig. 1), t and s with cedilla (and its uppercase counterparts) can be properly rendered as t and s with comma below when the typeface is Romanian-compliant. In Catalan (fig. 2), instead of an unmodified geminated el (l·l), we can have a properly compensated ligature.

Typeface_Noto_Serif
Fig. 1. Difference between cedilla and comma below (typeface: Noto Serif, by Google).
The_Catalan_geminated
Fig. 2. The Catalan geminated el with and without a language-specific ligature (typeface: Vollkorn, by Friedrich Althausen).

As for features, any typeface, to be made public nowadays, should have the following two:

Four modes of figures.

Not only do we need modern and old-style figures, but both with variable and fixed width as well. Not to forget the choice of the default mode, which can be unreluctantly old-style when the typeface is roman and suitable for long-running text.

All caps and all small caps modes.

When using these features, all figures and all punctuation marks must be vertically aligned according to the immediate context, be that uppercase or small caps (fig. 3). Additionally, double and single quotes (which include the apostrophe) are glyphs typically aligned to go with lowercase ascenders and need to be lowered when the mode in use is all small caps. Let us not forget that capital eszett (ẞ) must be available as a glyph in small-cap shape.

Punctuation_marks
Fig. 3. Punctuation marks, aligned according to the uppercase or small caps context (typeface: Source Serif 4, by Adobe).

Now let’s take a turn and look at the repertoire of glyphs:

Superindex and subindex.

Typefaces ought to go beyond 0–9 figures and include in these two features glyphs such as the following (fig. 4):

  • Basic mathematical operators: plus, minus, multiplication, equal, tilde, less-than, greather-than.
  • Some punctuation marks: parentheses, comma, full stop, semicolon, slash (also called solidus).
  • All lowercase and uppercase roman (or latin) letters, even those with diacritics.
  • All lowercase and uppercase greek letters.

Ligatures.

Please, do not design ligatures that do not improve the visual perception of the glyph group.

Superindexes_subindexes
Fig. 4. Examples of expressions with superindexes and subindexes. This is proof that we need glyphs shuch as accented letters, math operators, greek letters and some punctuation marks in superindex and subindex format. Source: Tipografía y notaciones científicas, by Javier Bezos (Madrid: Pie de Página, 2023).

Other characters.

Here are some other needed glyphs:

  • minus (2212)
  • two-em dash (2E3A)
  • three-em dash (2E3B)
  • horizontal bar (2015)
  • double vertical line (2016)
  • dot operator (22c5)
  • empty set (2205)
  • swung dash (2053)
  • interrobang (203D)
  • capital eszett (1E9E)
  • right pointing index, white and black (261E, 261B)
  • triangular bullet (2023)
  • hyphen bullet (2043)
  • black bullet, leftwards and rightwards (204C, 204D)
  • rightwards arrow, normal and heavy (2192, 2799)
  • dotted circle (25CC)
  • half bracket in top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right positions (2E22, 2E23, 2E24, 2E25)

Conspicuously, thus, well-prepared fonts cannot be light-weight files. In addition to more glyphs, good fonts require extensive coverage of kerning pairs, and this means more lines of code. Taking into account all that I pointed out (and obviously left out), one can see why a typeface design project can never be short-lived. Typefaces are a lot of work, but fascinating nonetheless.

Pere Farrando

Degree in Philology, proofreader and layout artist. Editorial Design and Typography Master’s Instructor.

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