The difference between condensed and compressed

canderson26 Jun 2007

I'm looking for a description of how condensed and compressed fonts differ. Some large families now contain both, so I'm interested in how type designers intend the two versions to be used. I apologize in advance if this has been covered before. Is it in the wiki?

ebensorkin26 Jun 2007#

I am interested to hear what folks have to say about this as well. I wonder if there is a real 'offical' distinction or if the reality is more informal.

.0026 Jun 2007#

Condensed = Narrow
Compressed = Narrower

canderson26 Jun 2007#

Condensed = Narrow
Compressed = Narrower

This is certainly true of fonts such as Interstate. Are "compressed" fonts just a recent phenomenon resulting from the need to describe two degrees of condensation? Are there any fonts with a compressed version for which there is no condensed variant?

canderson26 Jun 2007#

(This is here because I somehow hit post twice.)

Captured from commoncrawl.org on 19 Apr 2015. original URL