Type anatomy

How much do we know about it?

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typography

Typography is the discipline designers use to arrange typefaces in a user interface to ensure text is legible, readable, and scalable. It must also be visually appealing to users.

The right typography can enhance a product’s aesthetic, optimize user-friendliness, and contribute to brand perception.

1. X-height 2. Arm 3. Aperture 4. Ascender 5. Axis 6. Baseline 7. Cap height 8. Crossbar 9. Descender 10. Ear 11. Eye 12. Leg 13. Serif 14. Stroke 15. Terminal Typographers

Lorem ipsum x-HEIGHT The height of the lowercase letters, disregarding ascenders or descenders, typically exemplified by the letter x. The relationship of the x-height to the body defines the perceived type size.

arm The arm of a letter is the horizontal stroke on some characters that does not connect to a stroke or stem at one or both ends.

APERTURE The aperture is the partially enclosed, somewhat rounded negative space in some characters such as n, C, S, the lower part of e, or the upper part of a double-storey a.

ascender The upward vertical stem on some lowercase letters, such as ‘h’ and ‘b’, that extends above the x-height is the ascender.

axis An imaginary line drawn from top to bottom of a glyph bisecting the upper and lower strokes is the axis.

Typography BASELINE The imaginary line upon which the letters in a font appear to rest.

Character CAP HEIGHT The height from the baseline to the top of the uppercase letters (not including diacritics).

CROSSBAR The (usually) horizontal stroke across the middle of uppercase ‘A’ and ‘H’ is a crossbar.

DESCENDER Any part in a lowercase letter that extends below the baseline, found for example in ‘g’, ‘j’, ‘p’, ‘q’, ‘y’, etc.

Some types of descenders have specific names.

EAR Typically found on the lower case ‘g’, an ear is a decorative flourish usually on the upper right side of the bowl.

EYE Much like a counter, the eye refers specifically to the enclosed space in a lowercase ‘e’.

LEG The down-sloping stroke on the letter ‘K’, ‘k’ and ‘R’.

SERIF A serif is the little extra stroke found at the end of main vertical and horizontal strokes of some letterforms.

STROKE The stroke is secondary to the main stem(s). Some letterforms with two diagonals, such as A or V have a stem (the primary vertical or near-vertical stroke) and a stroke (the main diagonal).

TERMINAL A terminal is the end (straight or curved) of any stroke that doesn’t include a serif, some curved bits of tails, links, ears, and loops are considered terminals using the broader definition.

WOMEN TYPO Yai Salinas

Sofia Mohr

Fro m A r g e n t i n a

Fro m B r a z i l

Fre e l a n c e d e s i g n e r , experimental font designer and teacher.

Fre e l a n c e d e s i g n e r and type designer.

I G : @ ya i s a l i n a s

I G : @ s o fi a m o h r . d e s i g n

OGRAPHERS Anya Danilova

Lisa Huang

Fro m R u s i a

Fro m Fr a n c e

Fre e l a n c e t y p e d e s i g n e r and artist.

Fre e l a n c e t y p e d e s i g n e r.

I G : @ s i ke i r o s

IG: @hellolisahuanng