What is typography? Plus key type concepts you need to know

letter press with a hand adjusting the plate with typography week logo on top
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Typography is the art of arranging letters or type in a way that is legible, attractive and clear. Type is everywhere: it's on the back of cereal boxes, on billboards and on terms and conditions, it's on handwritten letters, typed out notices and on TV credits.

Typographers are people who create and manipulate type and typography design plays a key role in a designer's skill set. The typeface you choose and how it works with your layout, grid, colour scheme can make or break a design. Typography often carries the weight of a message, and getting it right contributes to the message being communicate successfully.

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Julien Fincker

Julien Fincker is a French designer and lives near Stuttgart, Germany. After graduating as a communications and graphic designer, he worked for influential agencies and companies such as Grafisches Atelier Stankowski + Duschek. Type has always been a big part of his work – but only as a user. In 2018 he finally started to draw his first letters and released his first typeface in the beginning of 2019. With Fincker Font Cuisine he takes the focus on type in all its facets, from designing fonts to woodcutting and printing in his workshop.

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Ruth Hamilton

Ruth spent a couple of years as Deputy Editor of Creative Bloq, and has also either worked on or written for almost all of the site's former and current design print titles, from Computer Arts to ImagineFX. She now spends her days reviewing small appliances as the Homes Editor at TechRadar, but still occasionally writes about design on a freelance basis in her spare time. 

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