What is the difference between legibility and readability?

Legibility concerns how easily individual letters and words can be distinguished, a property of the typeface design; readability concerns how comfortably extended text can be read, a property of how the type is set in layout.

What is the difference between a typeface and a font?

A typeface is the design of a set of letterforms (for example, Garamond); a font is a specific implementation of that typeface, historically a particular size and weight and now usually a digital file.

Typography and Type Design

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and expressive; type design is the creation of the typefaces themselves.

Definition

Typography is the arrangement of type for communication and aesthetic effect; type design is the practice of designing the letterforms and fonts that typography arranges.

Scope

This topic covers letterforms and their anatomy, the classification and history of typefaces, the setting of text (size, leading, measure, spacing, and hierarchy), the grid and page layout, and the digital design and production of fonts. It treats both micro-typography, concerned with the detailed setting of text, and macro-typography, concerned with overall structure, as well as the craft of drawing original typefaces.

Core questions

What distinguishes legibility from readability, and how does typographic setting affect each?
How are typefaces classified and how does historical context inform their use?
What conventions govern good text setting (measure, leading, spacing, hierarchy)?
How is an original typeface designed and produced as a digital font?

Key theories

Typography as a craft tradition: Bringhurst presents typography as an inherited craft with rational and humanist conventions, articulating principles of rhythm, proportion, and harmony that aim to honour the content and serve the reader.
The New Typography: Tschichold's modernist manifesto rejected centred, ornamental layout in favour of asymmetry, sans-serif type, and functional clarity, aligning typography with the rationalism of the avant-garde and the machine age.

History

Typography began with Gutenberg's movable type in the fifteenth century and developed through successive typeface styles (humanist, old-style, transitional, modern, slab, and sans-serif). The twentieth century brought modernist New Typography and the Swiss Style, while phototypesetting and then digital fonts in the late twentieth century democratised both typesetting and the design of new typefaces.

Debates

Invisibility versus expression: Whether typography should be a 'crystal goblet' that disappears in service of the text, as Beatrice Warde argued, or an expressive medium that can foreground its own form and the designer's voice.

Key figures

Robert Bringhurst
Jan Tschichold
Ellen Lupton
Adrian Frutiger
Beatrice Warde

Seminal works

bringhurst2012
tschichold1928
lupton2010

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between legibility and readability?: Legibility concerns how easily individual letters and words can be distinguished, a property of the typeface design; readability concerns how comfortably extended text can be read, a property of how the type is set in layout.
What is the difference between a typeface and a font?: A typeface is the design of a set of letterforms (for example, Garamond); a font is a specific implementation of that typeface, historically a particular size and weight and now usually a digital file.