What the font?!! Try our type quiz to see how much you know
How much do you know about fonts? Have a go at our 10-point quiz and see how many you get right.
Don’t worry if your initial score is low – I spent two out of the three years on my degree course learning about typography, and after decades in the design business I still don’t know everything!
The answers at the bottom of this post will not only tell you what the answer is, but more importantly, why that is the right answer. Enjoy it, and let me know how you do.
1 Which of these fonts is serif?
2 Which of these fonts is sans-serif?
3 Which of these fonts is slab-serif?
4 Which font should you never use in an email?
5 Which of these fonts is suitable for a paragraph of text?
6 Which style of font is used on the Paris Metro?
Layered Curly Script Art Nouveau Wood Block
Photo © Lissa
7 Which of the following is not an icon font?
Dingbats Zapfino Webdings Wingdings
8 Who of the following was not a type designer?
Adrian Frutiger Herb Lubalin AA Gill Neville Brody
9 Which style of font is normally used on a film poster?
Italic Condensed Expanded Heavy
10 Which style of font is more legible on screen?
Serif Sans-serif Script Gothic
Answers
1 Garamond. Serif letterforms have a small decorative line added to the end of a stroke as embellishment to the basic form of a character.
2 Helvetica. Sans-serif typefaces are plain, and do not have these embellishments.
3 Rockwell. Slab serif fonts are characterized by thick, block-like serifs.
4 Comic Sans. Surely I don’t have to tell you!
5 Palatino. The other fonts are too fussy to be used as text faces for a whole paragraph and do not work well at a small size.
6 Art Nouveau. This was a fluid, stylised and elegant style used not only in graphics but also in architecture between 1890 and 1910.
7 Zapfino is a text font, not an icon font. There is an icon font called Zapf Dingbats which you might be confusing it with.
8 AA Gill is a writer and critic. The well-known typographer is Eric Gill.
9 Condensed (squashed into a thin form). Condensed type is useful if you have to get a lot of information into a small space.
10 Sans Serif.
How did you score?
10 Congratulations! You are a king or queen of typography.
7-9 Not bad at all.
0-6 Oh dear, I think you need a designer.
and finally … a joke for font geeks
One font meets the other in Rome. He asks: “Hey, are you a Roman too?” “No,” says the other, “but I am an Italic!”
