Naming the Widest Width

Nikola Kostic
Nikola Kostic Posts: 42
in Technique and Theory
Hi everyone,

In a large type family (5 widths), how would you name the widest width? It is really wide. The widths already set are: Compressed, Condensed, Regular and Wide. Which one of these choices sounds natural: Extended, Expanded or ExtraWide? Any other suggestions? Also, among the weight styles are ExtraLight and ExtraBold, so in case the choice falls to ExtraWide, one style could end up being named "TypeFamily"ExtraWide-ExtraBold (not sure how this feels to a native English speaker).
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  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    Hacienda.
  • Nikola Kostic
    Nikola Kostic Posts: 42
     :D Thanks Hrant. I would ask you to elaborate, but that was pretty self-explanatory.
  • Erwin Denissen
    Erwin Denissen Posts: 300
    Maybe rename ExtraBold to either Heavy or UltraBlack. Then use UltraExpanded, UltraExtended, or ExtraWide for the widest width.
  • Johannes Neumeier
    Johannes Neumeier Posts: 380
    The difference between compressed and condensed seems understandable, but personally I never sure which is the more wide: Extended or wide, and likewise expanded or wide, they both fall short in relation to one another.
  • Nikola Kostic
    Nikola Kostic Posts: 42
    Erwin Denissen said:
    Maybe rename ExtraBold to either Heavy or UltraBlack. Then use UltraExpanded, UltraExtended, or ExtraWide for the widest width.
    I've set Heavy and Black for heavier weights already. The name "Ultra" makes Illustrator act funny, so I'm avoiding that. 
  • Erwin Denissen
    Erwin Denissen Posts: 300
    Nikola Kostic said:
    Erwin Denissen said:
    Maybe rename ExtraBold to either Heavy or UltraBlack. Then use UltraExpanded, UltraExtended, or ExtraWide for the widest width.
    I've set Heavy and Black for heavier weights already. The name "Ultra" makes Illustrator act funny, so I'm avoiding that. 
    Looks like Extra Wide is the way to go then.
  • Nikola Kostic
    Nikola Kostic Posts: 42
    @Erwin Denissen @Johannes Neumeier @Nick Shinn @John Hudson @Chris Lozos Thanks everyone for your input! It is highly appreciated!

    Also, thank you Señor @Hrant H. Papazian  :)
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    edited January 2018
    Nick Shinn said:
    Extra Bold Extra Wide makes perfect sense
    Plus it coolly evokes Soul Coughing's "Blueeyed Devil".
  • Adam Twardoch
    Adam Twardoch Posts: 515
    edited January 2018
    To make quick recognition of styles easier, you could use "extra" for weight only (ExtraLight, ExtraBold) and for width, use "ultra" (UltraWide). Or the other way around. 
  • Florian Hardwig
    Florian Hardwig Posts: 269
    Mark Simonson said:
    Century Expanded … was a narrower version of Century. It was called expanded because it expanded the amount of text you could fit in the same space.
    Here’s what Mac McGrew wrote about Century Expanded in Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century:
    One of the younger Benton’s early assignments was redesigning Century Roman, extending it slightly to meet the Typographical Union standards of the day, on which rates for typesetting were based. The result was named Century Expanded, issued in 1900. DeVinne, showing it in his company specimen book, said, “The expansion is upward, enabling one to get much matter in small space”—essentially what he had said of the earlier face. But it is obviously expanded in width also, compared with the original face.

    Image from Types of the De Vinne press; specimens for the use of compositors, proofreaders and publishers, 1907.
  • Deleted Account
    Deleted Account Posts: 739
    Isn’t this 125th anniversary of the day they decided to stop naming font sizes and started giving them numbers?

    Happy birthday size numbers!;)
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,995
    I’m a fan of extra wide, but it makes the name long which doesn’t always work well in menus.
  • Max Phillips
    Max Phillips Posts: 474
    I'm a fan of X-, for both Wide and Narrow/Compressed. Works a little better in menus.
  • Chris Lozos
    Chris Lozos Posts: 1,458
    Then you have the Ai problem of sorting fonts in an order only known to Socrates!
  • Ben Blom
    Ben Blom Posts: 250

    This is the naming system for widths and weights that I use in my Aspira typeface:

  • Mike Wenzloff
    Mike Wenzloff Posts: 106
    Ah, Ben. Nice to meet you (so to speak). I think Aspira was the first super-family I purchased...certainly the one with the most faces.

    And I do appreciate the naming scheme. 
  • Ben Blom
    Ben Blom Posts: 250
    Chris Lozos: Then you have the Ai problem of sorting fonts in an order only known to Socrates!

    The sorting of Aspira in InDesign looks like this:

  • Chris Lozos
    Chris Lozos Posts: 1,458
    InD sorts better than Ai but I don't know why ;-)

  • Ben Blom
    Ben Blom Posts: 250

    Chris, I’m afraid you are just wrong. In Illustrator, the sorting order of fonts is exactly the same as in InDesign.

  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,889
    At one time, this style sorting was provided by the shared Adobe CoolType library (and I helped verb* Sairus Patel's sort more than once, back in the day), but obviously at some point the apps diverged. Bummer.  :(

    Back in the day, sorting of styles within the family was done using width, then weight, and then slope. Width and weight were first grabbed from usWidthClass and usWeightClass when possible. Slope was based on the appropriate style bit, first.

    Of course, voodoo or magic was required if the family was believed to not have correct metadata.  :neutral:

    * Where "verb" is somewhere in between review, provide feedback, and specify.

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