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Larger typeface families may have condensed versions and extended versions where
the letterforms occupy a narrower or wider width than the regular version.
And if you have a lot of information to squeeze into a finite space, perhaps the
squeezed version is what you want, and perhaps if you don't have so much to say,
but you have space to fill, then perhaps the condensed version is what you want.
It's always preferable to use a real condensed or real extended font as opposed
to faking it by adjusting the horizontal scaling of the font.
And that's what we have here. The upper version is a faked condensed font.
It is Myriad Pro Regular, where the horizontal scale has been changed to 72%,
and beneath this we have the real condensed Myriad Pro.
Now, if you compare the thickness of the strokes, you will see that in the
squeezed version they are considerably narrower; they are 72% versus 100% in the version below.
It may be a subtle difference, but if we look at the letterforms in a slightly
larger version, we can see more clearly the nature of the problem, where in the
squeezed version, the shapes of the letterforms have been quite considerably
altered, as well as the width of the stroke being considerably narrower.
The condensed version of the typeface may be useful in a headline situation,
where because the letters are narrower. You can make their point size bigger and still
have your headline constrains to a single line, as in this example here.
In the first example, Helvetica Neue Black at 44 point, but going to the
condensed version of Helvetica Neue Black, we can go up to 56 points and still
keep the headline to a single line. A more extreme example in the ultra compressed
version of Helvetica allows us to go to 100 points.
But perhaps we don't want to occupy any more vertical space.
So going to a condensed version and enlarging the font is not an option.
In which case, we could go to the other extreme and use an extended version and
we have here a comparison of the Helvetica Neue Black at 44 points, but if we
change this to extended, then we are going to have to go down in point size to
32 points to keep the headline to a single line.