Over the centuries, the variety of all the fonts became more and more vast. This is why in the fifties, font experts convened to try and establish order and overview in the world of fonts.

In 1964, the DIN code for font classification (DIN 16518) was published. It is based on the history of fonts.

The committee also drew up upon the classification of fonts by ATYPI (Association Typographique Internationale), in order to obtain international comparability.

The Classification of Fonts divides fonts into the following gropus:

Old-Style Antiqua


Old-Style Antiqua is modelled on the Capitalis Monumentalis (Roman Capitalis). Furthermore, it can be traced back to the humanistic minuscules of the 15th centu... 

Garalde


The fonts in this group date from french fonts of the 16th century. In Garalde, the majuscules are often lower than the ascenders of the minuscules. For example... 

Transitional


Transitional, or Baroque Antiqua, does not have consistent distinguishing marks. However, in all of these fonts there's a strong contrast between the stem strok... 

Didone


The Didone group formed in France in the late 18th century (Didot). These fonts have a calm and static, technically exact impression. 

Slab Serif


The following font groups (groups 5-11) are not classified by stylistic periods, but primarily based on their characteristic traits. 

Sans Serif


This group of fonts also developed from the decoration forms of the mid-19th century. It is said to be the most abstract form of our letter-alphabet. 

Antiqua Variants


This group contains all the antiqua typefaces that can not be assigned to groups 1-6, 8 or 9.  

Cursive Scripts


The group of scripts includes all printed cursives, whereas the original tools (dip pens, oblique dip pens, brush strokes, ...) that helped form these scripts a... 

Cursive Antiqua


The fonts in this group emerged either from an antiqua font (groups 1-7) or its respective cursive. They were adopted by font artists, and through them received... 

Gothic Scripts


These scripts are also caled Fraktur-scripts or Blackletters and trace back to the Gothic script. There was a kind of renaissance in the so-called "German Scrip... 

Foreign Scripts


This cagetory includes all the scripts used in other countries, that don't fit into the previous 10 groups - for example Cyrillic, Arabic, Indian, Chinese, Hebr... 

Modern Scripts


The DIN classification only specifies 11 groups of fonts. However, there are lots of new fonts that were designed on the computer and don't fit into one of thes... 


Keywords:

Font classification, Classification of Fonts, Classification, Typology of Fonts