At TypeThursday, a monthly meet-up in cities including Los Angeles; London; and Bucharest, Romania, font designers critique each other’s letterforms over wine. They hold forth about negative space, consistent strokes and serif experimentation. The group’s website bills the gathering as “three hours of fontastic fun.”

But when dozens of professionals congregate to talk about their craft, things can get heated.

“Are those C’s exactly the same?” asked Evan Sult, an art director in Brooklyn, during a TypeThursday event in December in New York. He was examining a designer’s sketches for a Cuban restaurant’s logo. “They don’t look exactly the same.”

“And why should they be?” said Paul Shaw, a type historian who lives in Manhattan.

“Hey, hey, hey! Don’t make me ask the volunteers to get physical,” said Mirko Velimirovic, 28, the event’s organizer, jokingly.

Typefaces are everywhere. The New York City subway communicates mostly in Helvetica. The lifestyle companies advertising in its cars may use another modern sans-serif font or, increasingly, something more retro. Many large tech companies have designed or commissioned their own house styles, including Netflix Sans, Airbnb Cereal, PayPal Sans, Uber Move and Google’s Product Sans. (You are currently reading this in Imperial, by the way.)