Typeface

A typeface (or font family) is a design of letters, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, bold), slope (e.g., italic), width (e.g., condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.

There are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly.

The profession of designing typefaces is called type design. Designers of typefaces are called type designers and are often employed by type foundries. In desktop publishing, type designers are sometimes also called "font developers" or "font designers." A typographer is someone who uses typefaces to design a page layout.

Every typeface is a collection of glyphs, each of which represents a grapheme – an individual letter, number, punctuation mark, or other symbol. There are typefaces tailored for special applications, such as cartography, astrology or mathematics.