/a brief overview

Good typography does a lot. It conveys emotion, a sense of time and place. It ties into how we design things. For readability, usability and so on. It might not be something that one can specify, and point and say this is why it works. But when it's not there, you know something is off.

Remember those old movie posters? Or any new movie posters? Or the minimalist posters that some artists create? Or the cover of a magazine?

/personal history

I have been interested in learning more about type and design since long, perhaps since college time. Designing my website has been a personal obsession for me over many years. It is not what I want, but at some point I had to prioritise the actual writing. Instead of, feeling productive but not doing any actual writing.
In the current form, this site is hosted on Ghost and was using the default sans-serif. I liked sans-serif, but I did not know why. I did not know what serif meant. Last week I decided to change that.

/typeface vs font

A typeface is what a normal user usually calls font. So, Times New Roman, for example, is a type face and not a font.
A font is a typeface in a certain size, width. So, Times New Roman in 12 and Bold is a different font than Times New Roman in 12 and Regular and so on.

/what are serifs

Serifs are the small lines attached to the ends of letters. There is a historical context to it, as in that's how the romans wrote it. But no one is sure. Times New Roman is a serif typeface.
Sans-serif means without the lines. It gives a type a more modern minimalist look. Helvetica, for example is a sans-serif typeface. As is Inter, which is what this site uses now.

/to summarise

There is a long and interesting history to how types came into being. How they are/were designed. Their origins and how sans-serif types gained popularity after the war. This documentary on typography provides a good overview and history of the same. As I said in the beginning, good type is like good design. It helps you do what needs to be done. If that something is reading a text on a digital screen then the font should improve readability. But there is no harm in the text looking beautiful too. There are lots of types in the world. There is no one type to rule the world. It is just a type. The important thing is what enables you to do.