What Font?
Carl Shank • February 6, 2022
Your editor or supervisor wants you to duplicate a font used in a piece he or she has seen in print or on the web. It looks like an interesting font, but how do you know what it is and how do you find out what font it is? There are a number of ways to go about font identification, as shown in the graphic below. What should be said up front is that in any of these methods you will receive a range of fonts from which to choose. The more font parameters you give one of these programs, the better match you will have.
Successful Layout & Design
Calligraphy & Typography. Calligraphy, the art of beautiful handwriting, has a long and rich history that spans cultures, religions, and centuries. It developed not only as a means of communication but also as a form of artistic expression, religious devotion, and cultural preservation. While typography is not calligraphy, with much of type carefully structured, straight-backed and neatly drawn and focused on lettering for printing readability, both art forms involve visual expression of language. Both focus on the shape, proportion and beauty of letters. Both reflect religious, historical and cultural influences on writing styles. Both are used for artistic and decorative purposes in design, and much of type has been greatly influenced by calligraphic styles. Yet, they differ significantly in their methods, purposes and tools. Calligraphy is the art of hand drawn, beautiful writing, while typography focuses on the design and arrangement of type letters for print or digital use. Calligraphy is created manually with pens, brushes, or quills, while type is created digitally or mechanically using typefaces. Traditional tools used in calligraphy include dip pens, brushes and ink, while type is formed with digital or physical lettering. Calligraphy is highly expressive and free flowing, while type is usually uniform and consistent across all characters. Calligraphy is usually done for decorative and personal use, while typography is often constructed and used for mass communication in books, websites and signage. Mediums for calligraphy include paper, parchment, walls, while typography focuses on print and digital media. Yet, the roots of much of type comes from the wealth of history and styling offered by calligraphy. CARE Typography has been able with Font Lab's tools like Fontographer, to translate fine calligraphy into usable typefaces, even for the modern market tastes. The fine art of calligraphy is highlighted in the background to this post in the 2018 calligraphic rendering of the Scripture, "Well done, good and faithful servant" (Matthew 25:25a) by Calligraphy for Christ ( https://www.calligraphyforchrist.com/ ). Such beautiful religious typographic pieces actually begin not with the Gutenberg era in 1450 but with the ancient Chinese.
Herbert Hoffmann, Albert Bruckner, Max Hertwig, and Rudolf Koch collaborated on a typographic “atlas” or specimen book titled Hoffmanns Schriftatlas: Das Schriftschaffen der Gegenwart in Alphabeten und Anwendungen (1930) ( Hoffmann’s Type Atlas: Contemporary Type Creation in Alphabets and Applications ) Also distributed in France under the title Alphabets by Herbert Hoffman and other collaborators by Arts et Métiers Graphiques magazine, it is a specimen of alphabets, initials, monograms, logos and other typographic forms from early German typography. The atlas captures typographic modernism in Germany around that time, including influences of the Bauhaus and the modernist movement. It is considered a rich visual record of type and lettering design in that period, showing both experimental and traditional forms. In Part One of this series, we investigated the typography of early Germany through the lens of Rudolf Koch, Louis Oppenheim, E.R. Weiss, Lucian Bernhard, Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens, and Bernard Naudin. In this Part Two we revisit the typography of Ernst Deutsch, Friedrich Heinrichsen, Benjamin Krebs Nachfolger, Maria Ballé, Margarete Leins, Anna Simons and take a brief visit to the Ecole des Arts et Metiers in Stuttgart.
