🚀 go-pugleaf

Wayne 

I don't try to memorize fonts at all. It just happens naturally, in a few cases. What is important to me is to know how to track down a font when I need to. I know by looking at a font if it is sans or serif, and that cuts the list in half. If it is serif, then I determine if it is modern, slab, oldstyle or transitional. That cuts it down to a smaller section of the type book. Then I look for the character attributes of the font. (You can tell Arial from Helvetica by the tail of the letter "a", for example). 

Sometimes it is pure gestalt when you memorize one. Just last week someone was asking to identify the font Rubino Sans. I had seen it in the past, noted its funky use of design guidelines, and forgotten about it. When I saw the sample I knew I had seen it before, but could place the name. Less than a half hour later the name Rubino popped into my head, so I went back and answered the message. 

As for measurements, I learned points and picas a long time ago. I even have been know to spec printing in picas, which drives the printers nuts, because many of them only work in inches. 

Feel lucky. The point is now 72 per inch. When I started out, it was 72.27 to the inch, and there was an evil period in our history when both kinds of points were being used by different people.