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With all the font offerings available to designers, organizing fonts into categories is a helpful way to narrow your options and choose a typeface that fits your purpose. Familiarity with these classifications will also help you communicate more clearly with other designers and clients.
In the 19th century, printers and type foundries began separating fonts into classifications based on shared characteristics. The two broadest categories are serif and sans serif. Serif fonts have small finishing strokes, or “feet,” at the ends of characters—originally inspired by the chisel marks left in stone carving. Sans serif fonts lack these strokes ("sans" meaning “without” in French), giving them a cleaner, more modern look.
Within these broader categories, fonts are often further classified into subgroups such as Humanist/Old Style, Transitional, Modern, and Slab Serif (also known as Egyptian). More recently, additional classifications have emerged for styles like Monospaced, Handwritten, Script, Decorative, and Blackletter.
A font family refers to a group of typefaces that share a common design but vary in style—such as regular, bold, italic, condensed, or extended. While different font families may fall under the same classification, each one has its own name, design history, and intended use.
Your computer likely comes with several pre-installed fonts. However, these are often overused, especially by those unfamiliar with the impact of thoughtful font selection. While high-quality fonts like Univers, Sabon, and Clarendon offer professional polish, they typically require a licensing fee—much like using stock images. This cost can add up, especially if the font is only needed for a headline or single ad.
Fortunately, Adobe Creative Cloud users have access to Adobe Fonts, a vast library of professional-quality typefaces included with your subscription. Adobe Fonts allows you to easily browse and activate fonts for use in applications like InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop—without having to download and install them manually.
Note: Some font families offer multiple styles (e.g., light, regular, bold, italic), and you’ll need to activate each style individually in Adobe Fonts if you plan to use them.
Use Adobe Fonts to activate one font from each of the eight classification categories: Serif, Sans Serif, Slab Serif, Script, Blackletter, Mono, Handwritten, and Decorative, and add them to your Creative Cloud Library. Choose fonts that you do NOT already have installed on your computer. Use the Fonts, Details, and Availability tabs in Adobe Fonts for information about each font.
NOTE:
You can access Adobe Fonts through the Character menu in Adobe CC programs or at https://fonts.adobe.com(If you are not already in an Adobe application, you will need to be logged into your Adobe account to access this.)
How to activate and sync fonts:
https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/activate-fonts.html
(You should already have Creative Cloud installed.)
Using InDesign, create an 8.5” x 11” document with default margin settings.
Type the name of the font in that font, and label which classification it belongs to.
In a legible font, write a brief paragraph of 50–60 words that includes the following:
Why you chose that font
Who designed it
What type of personality you think it has and why
Where you might use it most often (e.g., headlines for an entertainment publication, body text for a corporation, specific commercial website, logo, etc.)
Present a total of 8 fonts—one from each classification.
Use the typesetting skills you have learned so far to present your information neatly and professionally. Keep the text aligned, legible, and within the margins.
Do not add color or any extra decorative elements; focus solely on the look of the fonts without distractions.
Save your InDesign file as Typography101_Assignment2_FirstLast.indd
If you are a paid subscriber to the Substack, you can submit a Screenshot of your assignment in the chat for grading.
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