In typography, a typeface is a set of characters that share common design features. Each typeface is designed, and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly.

The art and craft of designing typefaces is called type design. Designers of typefaces are called type designers. In digital typography, type designers are sometimes also called font developers or font designers.

Every typeface is a collection of glyphs, each of which represents an individual letter, number, punctuation mark, or other symbol. The same glyph may be used for characters from different scripts, e.g. Roman uppercase A looks the same as Cyrillic uppercase А and Greek uppercase alpha. There are typefaces tailored for special applications, such as map-making or astrology and mathematics.

The term typeface is frequently confused with the term font. Before the advent of digital typography and desktop publishing, the two terms had a more clearly understood meanings. See font for a complete definition of that term.

Swiss neuroscientist Peter Brugger of the University Hospital in Zürich has come up with a new theory on "ghosts" and "doppelgängers" (A doppelgänger is ghost of a living person, usually the viewer). Brugger, whose idea is detailed in an upcoming edition of New Scientist magazine, thinks the viewer is experiencing a "phantom of the entire body" just in the same way an amputee might experience a "phantom limb." The limb is no longer there, but the brain still tells the amputee it is. Brain damage can cause this effect, but people with normal brains may have the effect triggered by intense emotions such as fear, sadness, or euphoria. Brugger reports that mountain climbers who have experienced oxygen deprivation at about 27,000 feet have reported feeling a "presence" or having an out-of-body experience.

In September 2005, a team of mainly Swiss neuroscientists, including Brugger, reported the finding that they could trigger out-of-body experiences in subjects by stimulating a part of the brain.