Web Design for Mass Communications MC4203

More involvement in graphics will bring you a chance encounter with different font formats. Perhaps a printer or graphic designer will quiz you on what format you want, or what end-product you wish to produce. This guide is intended to make you familiar with your font follies.
		Type 1 or PostScript Type 1 Considered by the print and professional graphics industry to the be the best, highest quality format. PostScript is computer language based allowing for type (and graphics) to be printed in a precise and sharp way, at any size. Type 1 consists of two components: an outline and font metrics. both are required to print and view a font.
		TrueType Apple and Microsoft developed this format, which consists of a single file contains both screen- and printer-font data. the font files are smaller but the ‘hinting’ characteristics of the fonts tend to make the printing process longer. Mostly used by the non-design community. Designed to make better quality ‘on screen’ appearance and small print jobs.
		OpenType In between Type1 and TrueType, OpenType was designed to work cross-platform (Windows and Macintosh), have expanded characters sets and substitutions. Designed by Apple and Microsoft teams, OpenType contains, potentially, 65,000 characters verses the 256 characters of its predecessors. These *characters include: old-style figures, true-drawn small caps, extended ligatures, fractions, ordinals, dingbats, symbols and more — all in one font! Not all ‘O’ fonts will contain all characters — it’s up to the font designer and some features are only available through software that supports OpenType fonts. Some are Adobe Photoshop 6+ and Adobe InDesign. Adobe (www.adobe.com) currently is the largest producer of OpenType Fonts.

MS Character Map
*All characters available for a font, in that language, can be found on any PC-based computer running MS Windows by going to: Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Character Map.

Microsoft Explorer Browser
You can also open Explorer and navigate to C:\WINDOWS\Fonts (this is the typical location for the Fonts, inside the Windows directory. Locations may vary but can be located by clicking on the Search icon at the top of the Browser and typing 'Fonts.'

The font icons at the right side of the Explorer window can be double-clicked to view that font in various sizes. Very time consuming unless you know what font you want.

Browser Font