14 Dec 2009, Posted by Dan in Design Process, 3 Comments

How I Identify Typefaces

Ask anyone that I work with: I get poked fun at for identifying typefaces with a good degree of accuracy. I get some interesting reactions from interns who probably find themselves wondering how I caught them using Arial instead of Helvetica across the room. Without careful thought, picking a bad typeface for a stellar design can take something that looks great and send it into the trash bin.

I’m going to show you how I will step through my process. There’s nothing “right” or “scientific”- and with a little practice, you can find yourself being hailed as the Font Hero around your office!

What you need to know

There are a few things you should familiar with before you try looking at fonts. It’s a huge waste of time to head over to your favorite font site and just start memorizing font names– but you should be familiar with the ones that have stood the test of time. I keep Chris Spooner’s article, 25 Classic Fonts That Will Last a Whole Design Career bookmarked, as I feel these fonts are a good base to start with. I’d also recommend that your design folder contain them as well, for many reasons.

The other thing you’ll want to study is font anatomy. It’s not nearly as exciting as your high school science anatomy project, but it’s essential. Make sure you know your ascenders from your descenders, and what someone might be referring to if they comment on the spur of a lower-case “a”. I personally prefer the Font Anatomy wallpaper from font​.is for this one– it’s a very handy reference guide when its on my desktop.

So whats that font?

Arial in blue, Helvetica in magenta.

I’m going to keep picking on Arial and Helvetica, as I see the two interchanged quite a bit wherever I go. As you study typefaces, you’ll begin to find that every glyph has a very unique personality that is reflected throughout the entire typeface. As you find these quirks, identifying the font gets easier. For example, I know that Helvetica contains a lot of 90° angles in the terminals,  where Arial does not. This primary bit of knowledge usually is enough for me to figure out the difference between the two.

In addition to the 90° angles, there are a few other things I look at as well. There are rather large differences between the uppercase “R” and “M” to name a couple. (Side note: I personally, I find the “R” in Arial to be its most disgusting glyph, as the leg just limps off the character.) If you can spot these larger differences, you might find that you don’t have to inspect a font any closer to know what it is.

Build your type knowledge

When I began diving into type, I started out with Arial and Helvetica. There’s enough uses of both out there that you probably run into each more often everyday than you think. Once I felt comfortable enough pointing out the two, I started to add more to my repertoire. Gill Sans is a good next step, as is Akzidenz Grotesk (which is the typeface Helvetica was inspired from) and Univers. If you’re really getting into type, consider starting to keep track of where and how you’re seeing typefaces used. Good typography is about application, and each of these typefaces were created with a goal in mind. Interstate’s goal in life was to make highway signs easily readable– a place where a typeface like Helvetica doesn’t do well at all.