1: Overview


The invention of typography confirmed and extended the new visual stress of applied knowledge, providing the first uniformly repeatable “commodity,” the first assembly-line, and the first mass-production. ~ Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy

This week you will learn about type classifications.

Most typefaces can be classified into one of four basic groups: those with serifs, those without serifs, scripts and decorative styles. Over the years, typographers and scholars of typography have devised various systems to more definitively categorize typefaces – some of these systems have scores of sub-categories.

Learning Outcomes

  • What is Typography?
  • History of Type
  • Symbols
  • Knowing your A, B, Cs
  • Wake Up and Smell the Fonts
  • Lost Letters
  • Lost Typography From the Bauhaus
  • Why Type Matters
  • Cooper Union, NY
  • Type classifications
  • Old Style
  • Transitional
  • Modern
  • Slab Serif
  • Sans Serif
  • Black Letter
  • Display
  • Script
  • Decorative
  • Dingbats
  • Dot Matrix Fonts
  • Weight
  • Angle
  • Width
  • Families