More About Fonts

Carl Shank • March 9, 2021

Font Technicals

(Updated July 2021)

Postscript Type 1 Fonts

Historically, Adobe introduced what are called Postscript Type 1 fonts. The diagram above (and quoted comments here) are from https://www.adobe.com/products/type/opentype.html discussing the transition from old Type 1 fonts to new OpenType fonts. In 1984, when I began using Macintoshes and Laserwriters, Adobe was the premier place to secure Postscript Type 1 fonts. They were carefully crafted from the most well-known font foundries in the world. They represented the best in front formation and font delivery. Of course, many more designers and thousands more fonts came along the way.They offered fonts and font programs that took the jagged screen fonts on the early computers and "smoothed" them for better sight on the screen. They included what were called "printer fonts" that translated the font dynamics from the computer screen to a laserwriter printer that could print at 300 dpi (dots per inch). This was phenomenal at the time, getting printed pages that began to look like professionally designed and printed professionally set pages like that you would find in a book.


The set of characters in each font was generally limited to 256 characters. Therefore, to have a wider or thicker character, a new font had to be added to the font "family." Typically, there were four basic fonts to a family — book or regular, italic, bold and bold italic. Added to these basic four could be an ultra bold or extra black bold and small caps along with a condensed form of the font. Variations abounded, but there was one font for each basic variation. Adobe introduced MultipleMasters, such as Minion MultipleMasters, where smaller variations in font designs were included for different uses in different scenarios — "Called "Opticals," these variations have been optimized for use at specific point sizes. Although the exact intended sizes vary by family, the general size ranges include: caption (6-8 point), regular (9-13 point), subhead (14-24 point) and display (25-72 point)."


If you wanted a PC version of the same font, you had to translate the font characters to a PFB and a TTF version to use on a PC computer. True Type (TT) was then developed that gave one version of the font that worked on both Macs and PCs. Font management programs were then designed by Adobe and others, such as Adobe Type Manager (ATM) and ATM Deluxe and the Suitcase for managing and organizing the many fonts that became available. 


OpenType

"Any OpenType font uses a single font file for all of its outline, metric, and bitmap data, making file management simpler. In addition, the same font file works on Macintosh and Windows computers. As a result, OpenType lets you move font files back and forth between platforms with noticeable improvement in cross-platform portability for any documents that use type." Contrasted with 256 character fonts, OpenType fonts can now have 65,000 characters, making them highly desirable for font creators and users — "which allows a single font file to contain many nonstandard glyphs, such as old-style figures, true small capitals, fractions, swashes, superiors, inferiors, titling letters, contextual and stylistic alternates, and a full range of ligatures." OpenType fonts work seamlessly on both Macs and PCs and no translation from one platform to another is needed. In fact, Adobe has translated all of its fonts to an OpenType format with the .otf marking them as such, such as Minion.otf.


As Adobe points out, "Central to a discussion of OpenType feature support lies the distinction between characters and glyphs. Characters are the code points assigned by the Unicode standard, which represent the smallest semantic units of language, such as letters. Glyphs are the specific forms that those characters can take. One character may correspond to several glyphs; the lowercase "a," a small cap "a" and an alternate swash lowercase "a" are all the same character, but they are three separate glyphs. One glyph can also represent multiple characters, as in the case of the "ffi" ligature, which corresponds to a sequence of three characters: f, f and i."


"OpenType layout features can be used to position or substitute glyphs. For any character, there is a default glyph and positioning behavior. The application of layout features to one or more characters may change the positioning, or substitute a different glyph. For example, the application of the small capitals feature to the "a" would substitute the small cap "a" glyph for the usual lowercase "a" glyph. To access alternate glyphs in an OpenType Pro font, an application provides a user interface that allows end users to apply OpenType layout features to text. Applications that don't support Unicode or advanced OpenType layout features can still access the basic glyph sets of OpenType Pro fonts, which are analogous to the glyph sets in today's PostScript Type 1 fonts."


OpenType fonts also better facilitate foreign and complex languages with their many glyph variations and needs.


Adobe will discontinue use of Postscript Type 1 fonts in the near future.An important and informative article can be found in the recent issue of Macworld— "Adobe is Dropping Postscript Type 1 Font Support—Be prepared for the change," by Glenn Fleishman, Macworld, July 2021.


Translating Postscript Type 1 to OpenType

Thankfully, there are professional font creation programs, such as Fontographer and FontLab, that can translate older Postscript Type 1 fonts to newer OpenType fonts. They only caveat is that you must have the permission or license to either do such translations or purchase the newer OpenType fonts from their original font foundries. Use of Adobe OpenType fonts is available with subscription use of Creative Cloud programs from Adobe. Thousands of fonts are available through this monthly service.






Successful Layout & Design

Compositors & Type: Origin and Use of “Uppercase” and “Lowercase”

By Carl Shank • June 13, 2026
Compositors & Type: Origin and Use of “Uppercase” and “Lowercase” Carl Shank, CARE Typography Most everyone knows what “uppercase” and “lowercase” letters are. They refer, of course, to our “capital” letters and our “regular” small print. But not many know why or how they came to be known by such terminology. The answer is found in the history and development of typography and printing. “Case” here doesn’t refer to “circumstance” or “condition.” It refers to the wooden trays used to store metal letters, the top case for capital letters (“uppercase”) and the lower case for small letters. Each tray was divided into compartments to hold the type. The lower case also held the punctuation marks and other pieces of type, like “spacers.” The type case was a shallow wooden tray divided into compartments of various sizes. There were about thirty styles of type cases, and some of these were made in different sizes.[1] The most common, or standard, size was 32¼ by 16 inches, outside dimensions, and ⅛ inches deep, inside. One of three traditional plans or schemes for such type cases involved (1) all characters in one case; (2) capitals, small capitals and a few other characters in one case; or (3) the small letters, figures, points, spaces and quads in another case. The two latter cases formed a pair and would nearly always be used together.(See Images) Hand compositors (or “swifts”) would take individual letters, spaces and punctuation marks or other characters from the type case and place them in what was called a composing “stick” in such a manner that when the type characters are properly assembled, they form words, sentences and paragraphs. The work of the press room compositor was divided into two fundamental operations — the “setting” of type and the “unsetting” of type. The former was called composition and the latter, distribution. A visual example of such typesetting can be seen in some of the episodes of The Waltons, an American historical dramatelevision series about a family in rural western Virginia in the Appalachian/Blue Ridge mountains chain, during the economic hardships and mass unemployment of the Great Depression in the 1930s and the subsequent United State home front during World War II in the 1940s. The series aired from 1972 to 1981. John-Boy, a leading character of the series, opened a print shop in a shed by the family home with an old-fashioned mechanical printer that required setting cold metal type from a type case. His brother was the compositor while John-Boy ran the printing machine.

Vanity Type

By Carl Shank • June 6, 2026
Reading through an old volume of Frederick Nelson Phillips, Inc, Type Faces:With Which We 'Prove It With Proofs' in Typography for Advertisements (New York, 1924), I came across some type that falls outside of the standard typography models, called "vanity type." The term “vanity typography” is not a formal category in typographic history like Old Style, Transitional, Modern, or Sans Serif. Designers typically use the phrase informally to describe typography that draws attention primarily to itself rather than serving the text or reader. Vanity typography occurs when type is used as a display of the designer's skill, fashion, or personal taste rather than to improve communication. Readability is sometimes sacrificed for self-expression and artistic flair. Such type styles use excessive ornamentation, decorative letterforms, overuse of effects like shadows, outlines, gradients and distortions, unusual spacing, and generally typography used to impress rather than inform. Notice in the sample by Phillips, the different "A's," "F's,", "G's," "H's," "L's," "M's," "S's," T's" and "W's." This is not calligraphy lettering, but rather type that could have been used for verses or opening letters to paragraphs or stories.
Show More