The basic unit of typeface organization is the family. A typeface family is a group of faces that have been designed to work together harmoniously. The typical typeface family is a foursome, and the group normally takes its name—for example, Times New Roman, Bodoni, or Helvetica—from the “regular” weight roman member of the family. The foursome is then rounded out with bold, italic, and bold italic complements. Only well into the twentieth century did it become standard practice for type foundries to create typefaces in such families.
For this reason, some older typeface families have fewer than four members (Century Old Style, for example, has no bold italic version). But more often families contain more than the basic foursome. Popular typefaces often grow to include dozens of members. This is especially true with sans serif faces, as they are easier to redesign with radically different weights and widths than seriffed faces.
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