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Learning about Typefaces
The two basic types of typefaces are serif and sans serif. A serif typeface has horizontal lines (called serifs) extending from the edges of the character, such as at the bottom of a p or at the top of an I. A sans serif typeface does not have these lines (sans is French for without). There are more types of typefaces than just serif and sans serif, but these are all in the minority. Calligraphic, block, and other nonserif/non–sans serif typefaces usually have other elements that serve the purpose of serifs — extensions to the characters that add a distinctive character to the typeface. Another distinct type of typeface is the pi font, which is a font made up of themed symbols (anything from math to Christmas ornaments). The name pi font comes from the Greek letter pi (p), a common mathematical symbol.| Cross-Reference | For more on special characters such as symbols, see Chapter 41 |
Typeface variations
A typeface usually has several variations, the most common of which are Roman, italic, boldface, and boldface italic for serif typefaces; and medium, oblique, boldface, and boldface oblique for sans serif typefaces. Italic and oblique differ in that italics are a curved variant of the typeface, with the serifs usually heavily curved, while an oblique is simply a slanted version of the typeface. Other variations that involve type weight include thin, light, book, demibold, heavy, ultrabold, and black. Compressed, condensed, expanded, and wide describe type scale.
InDesign will show all variations available for a font, as long as those variations are stored in the font file, not as a series of separate files. For example, if you have a font file named Big Bold and a separate font file named Big Semibold, those will appear as two separate fonts in InDesign's menus and dialog boxes. But if you have a font file called Big that contains Big Normal, Big Light, Big Semibold, Big Bold, Big Ultra, and Big Compressed, all will appear as options for the font Big.
Typefaces come in several formats, with two predominating. InDesign supports them all, as long as your operating system or font-management utility does.
PostScript Type 1: This is the publishing industry's standard for fonts. Anyone outputting to an imagesetter or other prepress device must use these fonts. PostScript Type 1 font support is native to Mac OS X. Windows does not support PostScript natively and so requires a font-management utility like Adobe Type Manager, DiamondSoft Font Reserve, or Extensis Suitcase to work with PostScript fonts. Note that Adobe has ATM Light available for free download from its Web site at www.adobe.com .
TrueType: Codeveloped by Microsoft and Apple Computer, this is the standard font format of Windows, and it also is supported natively on the Mac OS. However, TrueType fonts are not supported by most imagesetters and prepress devices, and their use in your layouts can cause output problems. Do not use them in any professionally published document.
OpenType: This new version of PostScript, codeveloped by Adobe and Microsoft, combines some TrueType technology and is meant to eventually replace both Type 1 and TrueType. Its biggest asset is that it supports a wide range of international characters, symbols, and character variations within the same font, such as true small caps and ligatures — called glyphs as a group. Mac OS X, Windows 2000, and Windows XP support it natively, but you'll need to make sure that your imagesetter or other prepress device can handle them — at the time of this writing, many cannot. InDesign has strong support for OpenType, making all character and glyph attributes available in character formatting.
Note that Windows will display an icon letting you know what format a font is in, as the figure here shows. The code T1 stands for PostScript Type 1, TT for TrueType, and O for Open Type.
What's in a face?
Each of these variants, as well as each available combination of variants (for example, compressed light oblique), is called a face. Some typefaces have no variants; these are typically calligraphic typefaces, such as Park Avenue and Zapf Chancery, and symbol typefaces (pi fonts), such as Zapf Dingbats and Sonata. In Figure 40-6, you see samples of several typefaces and some of their variants. By using typeface variants wisely, you can create more-attractive and more-readable documents.
Figure 40-6: A variety of typefaces and their variants.
A font is a typeface by any other name
Desktop publishing programs popularized the use of the term font to describe what traditionally was called a typeface. In traditional terms, a typeface refers to a set of variants for one style of text, such as Times Roman. A face is one of those variants, such as Times Roman Italic. A font, in traditional terms, is a face at a specific point size, such as 12-point Times Roman Italic. (Until electronic typesetting was developed, printers set type using metal blocks that were available only in a limited range of sizes.) The word font today means what typeface used to mean, and almost no one uses font any more for its original meaning.
The heart of a document is its typography. Everything else can be well laid out and illustrated, but if the text is not legible and appealing, all that other work is for naught. If you don't believe type is central, then consider this: You've surely seen engaging documents with no artwork, but have you ever seen artwork carry the day if the type is ugly or scrunched? I didn't think so.
