Fonts, families and faces
Last updated 2026-11-02
On this page
"Have I got this font installed" depends on what "font" means. What you install is a face; what you see in a picker is a family; what you download is a file. They are three different things, and mixing them breaks pickers, search and favourites.
Three words, three sizes
| Word | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| font family | One design with several weights and italics | Inter |
| font face | One specific member, usually one file | Inter Bold, Inter Italic |
| font file | The .ttf / .otf / .woff2 on disk |
Inter-Bold.woff2 |
So "is Inter Bold installed" and "is Inter installed" are different questions: you may have the Regular and not the Bold.
How the names map onto those concepts
A font file has no "family" field and no "face" field — only a list of name records (see the name table): family name, subfamily name, PostScript name, each possibly repeated per language and platform.
Software assembles the two concepts from them:
- family = the family name (or the typographic family name);
- face = family + subfamily (
Bold,Italic,Regular…).
Which is why the same face can read Inter Bold on one system (family "Inter Bold", subfamily "Regular") and Inter + Bold on another (family "Inter", subfamily "Bold"). Both are legal; the first form exists for old software.
Static and variable fonts
Traditionally: one weight, one file. Regular, Medium and Bold are three files, three faces.
Variable fonts break that equation: one file carries continuous axes (weight, width, optical size) and can produce endless weights. A "face" is then no longer "a file" but a point inside one.
This site stays conservative for now: one file is one entry, and a variable font records only its default weight. Picking a value along an axis belongs to the type tester.
How this site uses the two concepts
| Where | Which concept | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Detail page URL | one face slug | Each face has its own names, metrics and licence |
| Family sidebar | family | Thousands of faces flat is unusable; group them first |
| Search box | family and subfamily names, plus aliases | People look for "that typeface", not a weight |
| Favourites | family (local) or face (library) | Local favourites mean "I have this family"; library favourites mean "this face" |
That is also why the favourites page carries a caveat: a local family favourite records "this family was installed on that machine at that time". After importing elsewhere, it may simply not be there — and nothing can verify it silently.
A common misjudgement
"I have Arial on my computer" does not mean Arial in a web page renders Arial: that also depends on the visitor's machine, @font-face, and the fallback stack. Covered in @font-face, descriptor by descriptor.
Further reading
- OpenType spec: the
nametable (family and typographic family names) - OpenType spec: the
fvartable (variable fonts and named instances)