How to Understand Typography Like a Professional Designer

The graphic opening the "Typographic Terms You Should Know" section is seriously broken. Arrows point to all sorts of wrong things. With a graphic like that, on a topic so graphically important, my rule of thumb is to disregard the article rather than spend the time to discern what is true and what is false in the text.

But if you're interested in typography, by all means buy "The Elements of Typographic Style" which is a sound and beautiful work on the subject.

Title is a bit misleading. It's actually just a brief introduction to typefaces and contains almost nothing about how professional designers work with typography.

The most important thing I've learned is that every (good) typeface is designed for a specific reason, otherwise they would have used an existing one. That reason may be overcoming a technical limitation of the time, or there is a quality in the content that needs additional emphasis.

All of the great typefaces have some kind of history. An original use case (the brief), influences, designer biography, etc. - which can be looked up on wikipedia or elsewhere. As a general rule, if your project meets the original requirements of the typeface, it should be appropriate. Sometimes a face will pick up additional cultural connotations along the way, depending where it's used. And great graphic designers know when they can mix-and-match history for style.