Many roman types consist of a family of fonts in the range
of roman, bold, italic and perhaps small caps (which are not the same as reduced-size capitals). Semi-bold may be in the mix
too. Some type families consist of only a couple of fonts, such as roman and
bold.
There are, however, super families, which are priceless for
both versatility and consistency, for they share basic structures whilst giving
each font within the family a different weight and space. Super families give a
designer the ability to mix typefaces successfully without a piece looking
overdone.
Super families are especially useful in books that contain several
recurring elements that all need to appear as separate information on the same
page; for example body text, sidebars, tables, captions, headings and
subheadings, footnotes, etc. All these different elements can maintain a
consistent look by the use of super family types, which have various weights
and styles, such as thin, light, condensed, black, compressed and medium, on top
of the fonts mentioned above.
Helvetica is one such super family and was mentioned in last
month’s post.
So is Scala, designed by Martin Majoor in the early 1990s.
Another example is Jeremy Tankard's Trilogy, created in 2009, which includes Egyptian,
sans serif and fat face. I think this super family is especially beautiful,
with its extremely thin lines contrasting with very fat ones and with such
gorgeous details (notice the “CEREMONY” M and N skinny serifs and fat
curly-cues, and take note of the lovely R).
