What kinds of typefaces exist?

A brief introduction to what kinds of typefaces exist.

The common ones

There are various possibilities to categorize typefaces. One way is to differentiate between the tasks they are used for. Like ‘text’ (suitable for longer texts in books or magazines) or ‘display’ (used for headlines, posters, anything that needs to draw attention as quickly as possible). Others take their shapes into account, like ‘antiqua’, ‘slab serifs’ and ‘sans serif’ typefaces. The main distinction here would be if they have serifs or not and what they look like. Another method of differentiation is to determine if they are monospaced or proportional.

The oddballs

There are also letter shapes that are less used nowadays like ‘blackletter’ or ‘gaelic’. Theoretically you could create a monospaced display font with gaelic letter shapes and slab serifs. Of course there are some typefaces that do not fall into any of these categories — often they are so unique that they don’t need one. These terms are quite usefull. Especially when you use two or three of them combined you can describe the overall character of a typeface pretty well.

Knowing now

So it is crystal clear: MonoLisa is a monospaced, sans serif text typeface – designed especially to make reading easier and faster. Find out more: more information can be found at MonoLisa website.