Type Families
All licensed, commercial fonts are available in a number of styles and weights: usually roman (sometimes known as plain or book), italic (sometimes called oblique), bold and bold italic.
For flexible working, it's best to choose a broad type family rather than use many different fonts.
A Sans-Serif Fonts
The sans-serif font Futura below has a vast type family. It contains many intermediary weights: light, book, medium, bold, and extra bold. It also contains several condensed versions for more slender type.
A Serif Fonts
The serif font below, New Bodoni DT, also has many weight variants.
Antique Fonts
Antique fonts have a long history and can be used to evoke a period feel.
Decorative Fonts
Decorative fonts include highly decorated and really eccentric fonts, often with very specific uses and rarely appropriate for more than three words at a time.
Script Fonts
Script fonts, which resemble handwriting, can be subdivided into traditional scripts that look as though they were produced by a quill pen and those that mimic modern styles of handwriting.
Symbol Fonts
Symbol fonts are composed of graphic icons to provide embellishments to text. These are sometimes created to complement a specific font.
Non-Commercial Fonts
A problem with non-commercial fonts, such as those decorative fonts that have free usage or are Internet downloads, is that they often have only one weight and are therefore of limited use.
Another problem is that font sizes may not be standardized. For example, a 12 point version of a display font may be much smaller than 12 points for traditional fonts.
Take Quiz 4: Typography 1, Part II
Source: Graphic Design Foundation Course by Curtis Tappenden, Luke Jefford and Stella Farris
