This is a topic of conversation you’re only going to find vehemently discussed at places like TypeCon, and in the basement of Cooper Union on a Monday night while Indra Kupferschmid takes the stage. But if you’ve ever struggled to find the right typeface amid a library as depthless as MyFonts, or heavens forbid, DaFont, you know the pain of the modern designer: we have no universal system of typeface classification.
Many attempts have been made standardize the classification of typography, but so far—165 years and counting—no taxonomy has been successful enough that everyone up and decides: Okay, Stop Now, ‘Cause We Got This. Below is an attempt to categorize and analyze 25 classic systems of Typeface Classification.
Join us to follow along as the project unfolds.
Designed with Taylor Childers and Liberty Leben.
This project was also published as a paper in Volume V, Issue I of the Parsons Journal for Information Mapping here.