I've been looking into different sources, mostly relying on
Smashing Magazine, a Quora post and other articles, but I'm not into this too professionally. And there are a few things that I can't really tell the difference.
So far, I've categorized my fonts folders like this:
Serif
- Humanist / Venetian
- Oldstyle
- Transitional
- Didone / Modern
- Lapidary / Wedge
Sans serif
- Grotesk
- Neogrotesk
- Geometric
- Humanist
- Flared / Glyphic
Slab serif
Monospaced
Blackletter
Calligraphic
- Brush
-- No texture
-- With Texture
- Manuscript
-- Casual
-- Formal
Display
- WHATEVER ADJECTIVE THERE IS
Super families
I'm having a hard time figuring what the differences are between Humanist Sans Serif vs Flared/Glyphic, and Humanist/Venetian Serif vs Oldstyle Serif. Besides that, is this classification accurate?
Comments
But thats depends of your persona, for example:
This was Me, 20 years ago. I was totallly new to fonts:
(3 categories was ok for me at that tine)
- The ones I like
- The ones I don't like, but still need to use for work
- The ones that sucks
This is also me, 15 years ago. I discovered dafont:
(About 20 categories now)
- Calligraphy
- Cartoon
- Eroded
- Terror
- Dingbats
- etc...
- Fuck! Only uppercase, no lowercase!
- Fuck! No diacritics!
etc...
- Free
- Not free
etc...
Me 10 years ago, when entering the font world:
(All the previous ones, plus 28 more new categories)
- Sans
- Serif
- Slab
- Blackletter
- Formal Script
etc..
- Light
- Medium
- Bold
- Heavy
etc...
- Condensed
- Normal
- Expanded
etc..
- Single Style
- Part of a family
- Foundry
- Designer
- Date
- Original Medium (Metal, Wood, Digital)
Also me, when getting into Calligraphy and Handlettering
(added 36 new classifications)
- Chancery
- Lombardic
- Cadels
- Expressive
etc..
- Fast Writing
- Slow Writing
- Wrist Movement
- Full arm movement starting from the elbow
- Constant pressure
- Variable pressure
etc...
- Pointed Nib
- Flat Nib
- Speedball rounded Nib
- Steel Brush
- Rulling Pen
- Red Sable Pointed Brush
- Flat Brush
- Dry Brsh
- Wet Brush
etc..
Another me again, after learning for quite some years:
(38 more categories)
- Mono-width
- Duplexed widths
- Incised
- Chiselled
- Swash
etc..
- High contrast
- Low Contrast
- Reversed Contrast
- Monoline
- Vertical Stress
- diagonal Stress
etc..
- Lining Numbers
- Old Srtyle Numbers
- Proportional Numbers
- Smallcaps
etc..
- Poster
- Display (Note that Display here has a new and different meaning than before)
- Text
- Agate
etc..
Me now, a complete nerd:
(at this time I have than 200 categories in total.. I don't even call them categories any more.. now I call them "data-points")
- Small x-height
- Large x-height
- Inktraps
- No Overshoots / Exagerated Overshoots
- Good Hinting / Bad Hinting
- etc, etc, etc...
- Humanisting Uppercase Proportions
- Modern Uppercase Proportions
- Rounded /A constrction (similar to the /O)
- Rounded /A apex (Similar to an upsidown /U)
- /J sit on the baseline
- /J goues down the baseline
- etc, etc, etc...
- Rounded /o
- Squared /o
- open /c
- closed /c
- one story /g
- two story /g
- looped /l
- rounded /y (similar to the /u)
- etc, etc, etc...
- Slashed Zero
- Dotted Zero
- Flat /3 top
- Crossed /7
- Fake Blackletter Numbers / True Blackletter Numbers
- etc, etc, etc...
- Faithfull revival
- Interpretative Revival
- Uses a unitized weight system
- Creative cool new design truly different to everything else?
- Good concept but Poor execution
- etc, etc, etc...
Me in the future? Who Knows!
Currently I'm training some Artificial Intelligence Magic shit to do the classification for me, so I don't have to do it any more.
I have even created a entirely new unit measurement scale (not yet public) that assigns each font a unique numeric value that represents the complete relations between all the proportions in each font (including weight, width, x-height, ascenders and descenders, side-bearings)
As you can see... You can go from very general categories like "sans" and "serifs", to very specific ones like "inktraps" and "slashed Zero".
The thing is.. find what works for YOU at your current level of interest.
You will evolve over time and you will keep improving your categories.
If you are now wanting to organize your fonts.. means you got the sickness already
Have fun!
Don't worry too much if the categories are not perfect, they will never be.
Also, at some point in your journey, you will find that having your fonts files in separated folders wont cut it anymore.. and you will hate font managers apps... The only solution is to create your very own custom database system.
Categorizing seems inherent to human nature, and I suppose it works quite well when there are hard lines between the categories. It doesn't work nearly as well when one tries to divide up a chaotic mix of things, like type styles, into neatly organized piles.
https://github.com/GerHobbelt/FontOrg-and-FontRenamer
You must enable net framework 2.0 and 3.5 in windows features to fontrenamer works.
Sami
- Serif
- Sans
- Slab
- Script/Handwriting
- Display
- Blackletter/Uncial
- Dingbat
- Japanese
- Demo (mainly a testing folder)
I figured with subcategories, that way lies madness.According to ‘a certain Chinese Encyclopedia’, The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, typefaces are divided into the following categories:
I was desperately looking for it but since Typophile is dead I thought It was lost
Se atribuye «a cierta enciclopedia china que se titula Emporio Celestial de conocimientos…» que las tipografías se dividen en las siguientes categorías: