How type families work? @ typotheque

"Family planning, or how type families work" is an essay by Peter Biľak that was published on typhoteque.com --a graphic design studio and a type foundry located in The Netherlands. Here's a portion of it, for the rest of the essay click here.

Family planning, or how type families work
The size and complexity of recently-developed type families has reached unprecedented levels. Look, for instance, at United, a recent release (2007) from House Industries. The family includes 105 fonts composed of three styles (sans, serif and italic), available in seven weights and five widths. It takes a couple of minutes just to scroll through all the variants listed in the font menu. For a further example of this trend, Hoefler & Frere-Jones have just released their Chronicle type family (2002-2007), the range of which extends through widths (from regular to compressed), weights (from extra light to black), and optical size (from text to headline). In terms of sheer size, Chronicle comprises 106 fonts and beats the rival United by a single stylistic variant...

Published in 1985 in the book, The stroke Dutch typographer and teacher Gerrit Noordzij proposed a theory of writing regardless of the used tool. His diagrame illustrates the main argument of his theory of writing, presenting the concept of translation, expansion and rotation.

A.