What if Typefaces were Humans?

A satirical comparison between Typefaces and People.

8 min readMar 29, 2014

WARNING: After reading this long post, you will never see humans the same way again. You will be become a font-nerd and a type-racist. Proceed at your own risk.

Typeface?

a typeface (also known as font family) is a set of one or more fonts each composed of glyphs that share common design features. Each font of a typeface has a specific weight, style, condensation, width, slant, italicization, ornamentation

People?

‘people’ is a plurality of persons considered as a whole, as in an ethnic group or nation.

You might ask what is the correlation between them? You might as well be tempted to dismiss the entire post as meaningless rambling of a frustrated graphic designer. You might want to pull over to the tab you just closed complete your entertaining exploration of Funny Cat videos.

But, hang on with me for the next eight minutes and believe me, it will make perfect sense.

These are some basic types of typefaces, which are separated into groups by distinct artistic differences.

Serif Typefaces
Sans-Serif Typefaces
Script typefaces
Blackletter typefaces
Monospaced typefaces
Symbol typefaces

Ignore this image. Its just here to make the blog look professional. Truth be told, even I don’t understand this thing.

Sans Serif Typefaces

Sans Serif Typefaces are the ones which do not have the small projecting features called “serifs” at the end of strokes. Their width remains consistent throughout the character. In print, sans-serif fonts are used for headlines rather than for body text. Sans-serif fonts have become the most prevalent for display of text on computer screens.

Some basic sub-types of Sans Serif Typefaces:

Humanist Fonts

These are the most calligraphic of the sans-serif typefaces, with some variation in line width and more legibility than other sans-serif fonts. They have some stroke contrast.

This font is like a teenager on his 23rd birthday. It is devoid of any traditional ornamentation (serifs) and has a very modern outlook. It has more or less passed through the rebellious adolescent phase and the realities of life have started to seep in. Therefore, it has has certain ‘Humanist’ features as well.

Geometric:

Lineale typefaces constructed on simple geometric shapes, circle or rectangle. Usually mono-line, and often with single-storey. Examples include Futura, Erbar, Eurostile.

A adolescent teenager of 17 years, this font adopts a funky look. Not caring about the legibility or readiblity factors (read: social/ parental opinion), this font instead adopts ‘stylishness’ as its guiding motivation. It is modern, minimal and magnificient. Naturally, it appears strangely out of place when paired with any other type of font.

Neo-grotesque:

These typefaces have less stroke contrast and are more regular in design. Considered as most neutral typefaces, they are widely used as display fonts on print as well as graphic media. The ends of the curved strokes are usually horizontal. Examples include Helvetica, Univers.

A perfect gentleman. Well developed in all aspects. Athletic body frame. Amazing social skills. Widely known. Widely used. He is the Tom Cruise of Typography. Apple of everyone’s eyes. You can dislike him, you can ridicule him, but you can never ignore him. He has an omnipresent personality. You will find him everywhere. At the Airports, on Billboards, Movie Theater, Public Parks (literally), everywhere.

Serif Typefaces

Serif comprise the small features at the end of strokes within letters. The fonts which have the tiny swooshy protruding features in the corners are called Serif fonts. Typefaces with serifs are often considered easier to read in long passages than those without. As a general rule, printed works such as newspapers and books almost always use serif typefaces, at least for the text body.

Some basic sub-types of Serif Typefaces:

Old Style / Transitional Serif Fonts

The style is characterized by a diagonal stress (the thinnest parts of letters are at an angle rather than at the top and bottom), subtle differences between thick and thin lines (low line contrast), and excellent readability.

They are the parents of the Typography world. What kind of parents? The not-so-cool parents. The type of parents who ground you for partying late. Parents who don’t allow you to play Xbox all day long. Parents who force you to study for six hours everyday. Parents who don’t allow you to miss school. The rigid perceptions they have about teenagers and adolescence frequently causes them to lock horns with their San-Serif kids.

Slab-Serif Fonts

Slab serif typefaces usually have little if any contrast between thick and thin lines. Serifs tend to be as thick as the vertical lines themselves and usually have no bracket. Slab serif fonts have a bold and rectangular appearance. They are sometimes described as sans-serif fonts with serifs because the underlying character shapes are often similar to sans-serif typefaces, with less variation between thin and thick shapes on the character.

The super-cool parents of the Typography world. They encourage their kids to never study, bunk classes, party hard and get high. They remember the times when they were San-Serif themselves and the problems they faced then. Therefore, they try to provide as much freedom to their kids as they could. They never bother them with frivolous and needless bugging. Needless to say, they go along very well with the San-Serifs tribe.

Mono-spaced Typefaces

These typefaces have the same width for each and every character. ‘i’ is no smaller than ‘w’. 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. Mono-spaced fonts are important for computer programming, terminal emulation, and for laying out tabulated data in plain text documents. Examples include Courier, Prestige Elite, Fixedsys.

The nerd. The computer geek, who can spend months staring at the black terminal with a blinking cursor and hundreds of lines of undecipherable gibberish. To balance his 200 plus IQ and an incredibly fast mathematical abilities, God has purposefully kept from him the wonderful social skills of Neo-Grotesque San Serif Typefaces. He stumbles when he dances. He pukes on the tables during dates. He stammers during speeches. He is the laughing stock of his high-school, college, university and pretty much everywhere. But, he has the last laugh when he joins some silicon valley based big-shot company with a six-figure salary and job perks you would kill for.

Script typefaces

Script typefaces imitate handwriting or calligraphy. They do not lend themselves to quantities of body text, as people find them harder to read than many serif and sans-serif typefaces; they are typically used for logos or invitations. Examples include Coronet and Zapfino.

The beautiful chicks of the Typography world. They spend hours in front of the mirror perfecting their curves. They floor the reader with their alternate glyphs, ligatures, diagrams, styled variations, multiple widths and what not. They come from well established Type Foundries and usually require a lot of experience to operate. Also, they don’t come cheap.

Blackletter typefaces

Blackletter fonts, the earliest typefaces used with the invention of the printing press, resemble the blackletter calligraphy of that time. Many people refer to them as gothic script. Various forms exist including textualis, rotunda, schwabacher, and fraktur.

The old granddad of typography, with experience dating back to the Gutenberg era, they are the most traditional of the lot. refusing to change their opinions, deciding to keep their funny 19th century unreadable, illegible lettering. Even in this modern age. You can find them sitting silently in the old rocking chair, quietly reading a William Blake classic. Any conversations with them are bound to start of with: “Back in our days, we used to…”

Symbol typefaces

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.

Beware of them! They look like they just escaped from a Mental Hospital. They will speak a language you will not understand, containing characters like arrows and human heads. They will wear the most weird outfits. They will have the most weird hairdos. Just stay away from them! You never know if one of them is from a Cannibal tribe of Amazon Rainforest.

This pretty much sums up the most striking personalities of the Typography world.

There is just one tiny thing I want to say. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the types of Typefaces. I just included the categories, which I felt fitted in well with the theme of the post. Also, I might add some other categories to this post in future.

So, the next time you bump into a bickering teenager don’t hesitate to yell out: “You fucking Geometric Typeface, behave yourself!” He most probably would not understand.

If you want to read further, I suggest you go and check out these sights. They are bound to amaze you:

,.-/