How many pieces can you cut from a single letter?
Way more than I would have guessed. Or wanted.
Typedia did a much more significant job of attempting to explain every nook and cranny of what makes up typefaces than the anatomy document– but even with both of them to use, I’m still rather perplexed. It almost seems like there are two or three neat little terms to describe *almost* the same structure. I’m not sure if it’s a lack of an artistic eye or that I looked into them at 11:00 pm on a Wednesday night, but a lot of it simply looks like repetition. There are acute differences– little features that set them apart, I can tell.
But right at first glance, I don’t see it. It might take some more prolonged study to get past the counters, eyes, ascenders, descenders, baselines, and the other basic margins.
However, there was one observation I was able to take away– a significant number of these structures are prominent in decoration rather than functionality, such as serifs, ears, and links. Even without them, the letters remain legible– decipherable– to the human eye. The typeface is less attractive and creative if it’s cut down to its most clean and simplistic parts (albeit not necessarily a bad thing), without the sparkles and glitter.
