In typography, fonts are best defined as a complete assortment of type in varying styles and sizes.
Fonts may not be a specification that is as prominent as other major components in printing and design, but it is nonetheless essential and highly relevant especially towards the overall aesthetic appeal of projects.
Design Workz elaborates on three types of fonts as follows:
Created by Adobe and Microsoft, the current standard in fonts are OpenType fonts (denoted as *.otf), which is also the newest font format to be introduced. Its fonts contain both screen and printer font in a single component, and can allow for an extremely large character set. Hence, one single file can can contain additional characters, languages and figures that may previously have been separately filed. An OpenType font file is good for use in both Mac and Windows, which make this font type particularly easy to manage and popular.
TrueType Fonts (denoted as *.ttf) was created by Apple and licensed to Microsoft, making them the industry standard. Created before the OpenType font, TrueType fonts are highly manageable due to the single files. Utilizing TrueType fonts will also allow for higher quality font display regardless of size, as there is the availability of a process which is able to determine which pixels are to be displayed. A Truetype font consists of a single file that contains both the printer and screen versions in a single file. They are also the majority in fonts, are usually come pre-installed on Mac and Windows operating systems.
Developed by Adobe, Postscript font, also known as Type 1 Font, is made up of two parts. One part contains the information to display the font on screen and the other part is for printing. In order to be printed, both print and screen versions are necessary to aid the process. While it allows for high-quality and high-resolution printing, it has slowly been replaced by TrueType and then OpenType fonts, as PostScript font files may not be compatible across different platforms, as different system versions exist on both Mac and Windows.
Design Workz hopes this brief introduction to fonts will provide one and all with better understanding of the simple, yet complex font. Feel free to approach us should you wish to know more!