She's just my type ;)

Many graphic design projects call for the use of typefaces. In fact, many logos and icons are primarily made up of the aforementioned design elements.

Typography, the art and technique of arranging, designing, and modifying type glyphs, is important to nearly all forms of graphic design projects. You as a designer must understand the terms, principles and applications behind this art and use that knowledge effectively for his craft.

A specific graphic design project would tend to a certain font. There are loads of type families out there, including bold, italic, roman, light, condensed, extended, and combined. Its down to you to decide which one suits the style of design you are creating.

Bold or boldface is a lot heavier in weight than roman and it can be either black or medium, depending on the weight of the typeface. Italic is type featuring an angle or slant, usually to the right. Roman is the standard typeface and is generally used in books. Light is the thinner version of roman. Extended is a wider typeface than the standard and provides greater flexibility.

Condensed is the opposite of extended typeface, and is used on narrower or smaller spaces. Times New Roman, Courier, and Arial are some of the most common type families used today.

It is said that an effective design must not use more than three typefaces to prevent confusion. However, a designer must be able to decipher which type families must be combined and applied in a single graphic design project to achieve the ideal result.

Aside from knowing the different type families, it is equally crucial for the graphic design maker to know the various terminologies in typography. The most important terms to know are serif, sans serif, and point. Serifs refer to the small lines at the end of character strokes.

They make reading easier because they guide the audience from one character to another, from one word to another. Hence, serif fonts like Times New Roman and Book Antiqua are widely used in books, magazines, newspapers, etc. Meanwhile, san serif fonts are those that do not have small lines at the end of the strokes, such as Arial and Futura.

Now, a font character has different parts referred to as letter anatomy or typeface anatomy. Breaking down the characters into parts helps the graphic design maker to effectively use, create and modify the font for the purpose at hand. The baseline is the invisible line on which all the characters in a certain type family sit. Meanline is the line at the top of most lowercase characters like “n” and “a”. There are other parts that have to be known and understood, such as stem, bar, bowl, ascender, leg, and shoulder.