Fonts – characteristics & history of popular typefaces
History
This deck will teach you to identify the world's most popular typefaces. It showcases over 45 fonts, each with a short history and a list of defining characteristics.
This deck is maintained with the CrowdAnki add-on and available on GitHub. If you find a mistake, or have other ideas on how to improve the deck, please don't hesitate to open a new issue! If you wish to stay informed of new releases, watch the GitHub repository or subscribe to the releases feed on GitHub.
The basis for these flashcards is the now-defunct FontSpotting deck developed by Dustin de Souza and Jessica Witt. The content is used with their kind permission. All fonts remain the property of their respective type foundries/designers/owners.
Sample Data
| Name | Avant Garde |
| Specimen |
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| Characteristics | Bowl of “R” doesn’t close, but “P” does.Curve on tail of capital “Q”.Short descenders; “g”, “j”, “p”, “q”, “y”. |
| History | Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase designed Avant Garde around 1968. It was based on Lubalin’s logo for Avant Garde magazine. The original face was all uppercase. Avant Garde was the first typeface released by ITC when the company was founded in 1970. Next to being used in all types of art publications, Avant Garde was a classic in ’70s advertising design. |
| Tags |
| Name | Helvetica Neue |
| Specimen |
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| Characteristics | Widened crossbars on “t” and “f”.X-height adjusted to be visually simillar across weights.Capital “M” extended to improve balance and aesthetics. |
| History | Neue Helvetica is a reworking of the typeface with a more structurally unified set of heights and widths. It was developed at D. Stempel AG, a Linotype subsidiary. The studio manager was Wolfgang Schimpf, and his assistant was Reinhard Haus; the manager of the project was René Kerfante. Erik Spiekermann was the design consultant and designed the literature for the launch in 1983. Other changes include improved legibility, heavier punctuation marks, and increased spacing in the numbers.refer to Helvetica for original history |
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| Name | News Gothic |
| Specimen |
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| Characteristics | Distinctively shaped “a”.Double story “g” and it’s ear.Relatively short descenders. |
| History | News Gothic is a realist sans-serif typeface designed by Morris Fuller Benton, and released by the American Type Founders (ATF) in 1908. The typeface was originally drawn in two lighter weights, a medium text weight using the title News Gothic, and a closely related light weight marketed under the name Lightline Gothic. The typeface family was enlarged in 1958 with the addition of two bold weights. News Gothic is similar in proportion and structure to Franklin Gothic also designed by Benton. |
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