Font Information & Bembo

Bembo is a serif, old style font commissioned by Aldus Manutius, cut by Francesco Griffo in 1495 and redesigned as we see it today by Stanley Morrison in 1929. It has an extensive family with bold, bold italic, extra bold, extra bold italic, italic, regular, semibold, semibold italic options.

Old face types usually have lightly bracketed serifs, with a moderate change from thick to thin strokes in the letter and an oblique stress in the direction of the thick strokes. The italic form is usually slightly decorative. The letters tend to be light in weight, although the type family usually includes a bold version. Example: Bembo

Transitional types have serifs that are more clearly bracketed and have a more marked, but not abrupt, change from thick to thin strokes. There is a less obviously oblique direction in the heavy part of the letter. Example: Baskerville

Modern types have fine, unbracketed (hairline) serifs with a strong contrast between thick and thin strokes. There is a strong vertical stress in the direction of the heavy parts of the letters. Example: Didot

Stroke Weight: The thickness of lines in a font character.

Axis: An imaginary line drawn from top to bottom of a glyph bisecting the upper and lower strokes is the axis

Small Caps: are uppercase (capital) characters set at the same height and weight as surrounding lowercase (small) letters or text figures.


Lining figures: an arabic numeral that aligns with the base of a type line or printed line —called also modern figure.


Non-Aligning Figures: Text figures (also known as non-lining, lowercase, old style, ranging, hanging, medieval, billing, or antique figures or numerals) are numerals typeset with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the name.

Ligature: Two or more letters combined into one character make a ligature. 

"When type was cast in metal, the printing surface – the “face” – was mounted on a block of metal called the “body”. The type sizes – measured in points – refered to this metal body rather than the face itself. The proportion of the face on the body could vary considerably from one typeface to another. This principle still applied. For example a 10 point type is one that measures 10 points from baseline to baseline when set solid (ie without any extra space being added between the lines). So it is possible for one 10 point type to look smaller than another but they will both take up the same depth from line to line. Most typefaces that look big on the body have a large x-height and short ascenders and descenders."

http://www.linotype.com
http://www.typographydeconstructed.com