Metal type is usually cast in an alloy mainly made of lead. It is a piece of metal shaped into a rectangular prism with a top surface which is the size of the letter and a height of around 24mm, and is used in a combination to produce a type page for

Imaginary body refers to the frame that will be the size standard when designing a font. A 12-point (1 point = 0.3514mm) font, for example, will be designed within a 4.217mm x 4.217mm frame. That frame is the imaginary body. The size of the letter is

Photocomposition (or phototypesetting) is one technology for creating paste ups, which are used in printing characters. Early printing technology involved the assembly of movable type, metal pieces upon which characters had been carved individually,

Kyū (級) is a unit of measurement used to express the size of characters in photocomposition that is particular to Japan; it is equal to 0.25mm. It can also be written as “Q,” an abbreviation that is derived from the origin of its name, “quarter,” as

A reference frame is a frame constructed within an imaginary body that would coincide with the outer edge of the surface of a piece of type. The font is designed within this reference frame. It is not simply the case that a character can be design

The term “logotype” was originally used in printing to refer to the casting of type that contained multiple characters on a single piece of type, such as Æ.  Today, the term has come to refer to characters that capture a company’s or organization’s n

“Lettering” refers to the writing of characters/letters. This can refer to, among other things, traditional styles of writing known as shodō and calligraphy, in which a style is refined with the efficacy of the characters’ shapes in mind; to typeface

“Font” used to refer to a single set of metal movable type of the same style in the same size. A “single set” referred not just to the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, in the case of European languages, but each of those letters in both upper- and

Typography originally referred to the technique of letterpress movable type printing, but today refers more broadly to the technique of arranging characters for the production of printed materials. Since the invention of printing technology by Gut

The word “typeface” originally referred to the face of a piece of metal type; from that it came to designate a uniform style of design shared by a set of type. It is now used for the digital fonts that are used on computers in place of physical movab