The typeface visible to an end-user is commonly assumed to be a Font. However, many people get confused about applied nomenclature (e.g. glyph, character, symbol) with regard to the Fonts. Typically, the fonts are classified in different families
- Bitmap Font - is a raster font. It is stored as a collection is pixels. It is very efficient in small screens, but has scaling issues.
- Outline Font - is a vector font. It is stored as a collection of images, lines, curves, etc.
- Stroke-based Font - is a vector style font, where stoke paths are defined for the glyph.
There is a typeface rendering engine embedded into the Operating System (e.g. Mac OS X, Linux, Windows). This software (e.g. AAT, Uniscribe, Graphite) is developed by Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, SIL International, etc. Generally, we use outline fonts that offers better quality while scaling.
- Adobe Type 1, Type 3, OpenType (along with Microsoft)
- Apple TrueType
- Monotype
We could use the following Font Type Design tools to custom design the glyphs or other aspects of the fonts.
- Adobe Font (e.g. FDKO)
- Crossfont
- Fontastic for Vector Icons
- FontForge
- FontLab Fontographer
You can purchase a Font from a collection available at the following URLs:
- Adobe Fonts
- FontLab Store
- Google Fonts
- Monotype Fonts
- Yunica Fonts
Please feel free to contact us directly, if you have any queries further.