Super Family Fonts
Karmen Mcarthun
The norm in a superfamily is to start from an identical character shape; class-specific features such as serifs are added to that shape. The result is a set of fonts with a similar appearance that belong to different classes such as sans, serif, slab serif, rounded.[2][3]
Superfamilies may include fonts grouped together for a common purpose that are not exactly complementary in letterform structure. They can allow organizations to expand their image and style while maintaining stylistic consistency. For example, BBC Reith font superfamily was commissioned by the BBC in 2018 to facilitate 'typographic expression' and consists of three styles (condensed, sans, serif) as well as a multitude of weights.[4][5]
A superfamily is a category of related groups of fonts, for example, serif or sans font families, that share some design attributes but have different functions, making font pairing easy. The individual fonts in the superfamilies can either work by themselves or together to address complex text hierarchies. Such broad type design systems are typically designed to address multilingual typesetting, to give different languages different voices, to differentiate their roles, or to facilitate page navigation.
To truly unify your business' branding, it is vital to find a font that both matches your brand identity and yet can be used across every department in any imaginable context. From email footers to the logo that will adorn your every business card, a companywide font needs to be able to do a lot. Finding superfamily fonts will help you get a range of all designed typefaces to work together flawlessly. Whatever information you are providing for your reader, the font it is written in will always affect the impression they are left with. The same is true of your website, your literature, and the PDFs you circulate. Nothing looks more unprofessional than mismatched fonts. It is one of the first things people notice when they are evaluating your business. And yet, standardising your fonts across the board can lead to problems of conversion. A superfamily font allows you to have tools in your toolbox for every possible situation, perfectly tailored to your business alone.
We put the effort into our design process, so we are always up to date. We are trendsetters, our iconic Apoc font can be seen in all sorts of places and has more than a few imitators. Go to our website and you will be able to see our full range of customizable engineered typefaces including modern bold italic font, fonts for editorial design, elegant thin serif font and bold condensed sans serif fonts. If you are an up-and-coming business looking to give customers a lasting impression, or an artist who wants a typeface to match your innovative work or even if they're looking to buy fonts for windows, Blaze Type can give you the highly engineered fonts you need.
So, imagine the situation: you have found a superfamily font you like the look of. It works for you, it is stylish, suits the designs you have already made, and after hours, weeks and days of trawling through font libraries to no avail you are simply relieved to have found something. Then the font doesn't work on phone screens, it looks awful when blown up large: it cannot even do italics. Other font sellers are often guilty of not putting in the work when designing a font. They will develop the bare minimum, often itself copied from elsewhere, and leave you searching for answers after they have pocketed your money.
Serious issues with convertibility can often plague fonts, this means your readers might be seeing something completely different to the website you have so carefully put together if they are viewing it through a different operating system, or with a different web browser. Blaze Type carefully engineers our full range of fonts to be compatible with all media, which makes sure we are perfectly displaying your writing in our polished and stylish fonts in any format. Whatever device your readers are using, whichever of the many browsers they decide to use (and whatever compatibility issues they may typically have), we will make sure they get to see the same high-quality font you are writing in.
So, take a look at our site and see which of the superfamily of fonts we offer might be perfect for your project. Blaze Type has always relied on the quality of our fonts; in this industry, there is nothing else to set you apart. Since starting back in 2016 with a Kickstarter campaign and just a lonely singular font (the wildly successful Osmose) we attracted enough attention to build the business we have today. We are at the forefront of modern design aesthetics, with a proven track record of staying ahead in the sea of constantly shifting design fashions and can bring all that innovative design to you with affordable font licensing that never skimps on quality.
A type super family is a family of typestyles that are united in some way, usually sharing the same basic foundation and structure, but with different finishing details. Most commonly, a super family will offer related serif and sans designs in a range of weights.
Other stylistic variations can include informal, slab, humanist, script, decorative and display version, as well as width variations, such as condensed, compressed, and expanded. The advantage of using a type super family is that they offer a wide and varied selection of weights and styles that shine as individuals, but also combine harmoniously when used together.
Some super families take an innovative approach. For instance, Linotype Compatil is a modular type system with four distinct styles, all having the same proportions and spacing: Compatil Exquisit is a Venetian serif, Fact is a humanist sans serif, Letter a slab serif, and Text a transitional serif.
The CM-Super family provides Adobe Type 1 fonts that replace the T1/TS1-encoded Computer Modern (EC/TC), T1/TS1-encoded Concrete, T1/TS1-encoded CM bright and LH Cyrillic fonts (thus supporting all European languages except Greek), and bringing many ameliorations in typesetting quality. The fonts exhibit the same metrics as the METAFONT-encoded originals.
For some reason, it remains difficult to hunt down font families that have a serif and sans-serif combo. As far as I have found, none of the font sites allow you to search by this designation, yet it seems quite useful to utilize the hard work of typographers who, with great attention, have designed sets that work in this capacity. I'm not a huge student of typography, but I do understand that there's some grumbling about the use of these pairings, that using them produces less-than-ideal results or reflects a bit of laziness. I get it, and agree that some of the best combos are hand picked, but this post isn't about that. There are plenty of other font pairings that don't share a family, that work together because they contrast nicely, but again maybe a different post. This post is simply put together to identify what is available in the event that you're needing a quick sans/sans-serif harmonious combo or you're looking for wider variations within a single family style.
There isn't a clearly standardized name for serif/sans-serif paired families, but from what I can find, superfamily is the term most commonly used. You may also find references that use the terms suite, hyperfamily, type system, or family group. Following is a list compiled from other posts that I found and personal font searches. Please share superfamilies that you know of that didn't make the list, and I'll be glad to add them.
The result is the missing element in an otherwise strained and bloated font category: A typeface whose matter-of-fact personality looks familiar and creates trust, but at the same time provides fresh inspiration with individual features making it perfect for strong brand building. Case is less neutral than its peers and stands out from them with greater recognition.
The most striking feature of Case is already reflected in its name. Derived from the systematic feature of terminating characters, such as c, a, s, e and their relatives, including capital letters, small caps and unicase characters, each at its own height. This design decision emphasizes the horizontal, almost compulsively forcing harmony and allowing for extremely tight setting and experimental applications.
As the weight increases, this feature becomes more dominant, right up to ExtraBlack, which uncompromisingly takes it to the extreme. This deliberately reverses the harmony into the opposite and allows logos, wordmarks and headlines to be designed more concisely. Since the name of a typeface should already introduce its character and almost all fonts (co)designed by Erik Spiekermann get by with four letters anyway, the naming almost came naturally.
Another strength of Case is its remarkable legibility. This is mainly due to its three optical sizes: the core family which is great for most applications, especially larger use, Case Text which works well for more extensive content and Case Micro which is intended for small text. Depending on the application, it can still guarantee good legibility at a font size of 4pt; in some cases, Micro even works below this.
The secret of optical sizes lies in the possibility of making individual characters more legible, and that the desired visual impression of a font can be maintained across all font sizes. The effect in a headline is then identical to that of a footnote. Digital environments especially benefit from this adaptability as the font sizes and styles can be displayed differently (responsively) when viewed on small smartphones or large displays.
The real italics are a truly unique feature. In the genre of Neo-Grotesques, they are a rare occurrence in such a concise form. Many type designers are usually satisfied with obliques, which are merely slanted italics that have not been specially designed. Yet with real italics many common brand values can be conveyed through this almost organic design, e.g. optimistic, human, lively, transparent, friendly, distinctive, creative, harmonious or elegant. The angle of inclination also supports trust in the brand, as it corresponds to that of the well-known classics Helvetica, Univers or Akzidenz Grotesk (12).
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