Impact is a realist sans-serif

Sans-serif

In typography, a sans-serif, sans serif or san serif typeface is one that does not have the small projecting features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning "without"....

 typeface

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....

 designed by Geoffrey Lee in 1965 and released by the Stephenson Blake foundry. Its ultra-thick strokes, compressed letterspacing, and minimal interior counterform are specifically aimed, as its name suggests, to "impact". Impact has a high x-height

X-height

In typography, the x-height or corpus size refers to the distance between the baseline and the mean line in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the letter x in the font , as well as the u, v, w, and z...

, reaching nearly to three-quarters the capital line. Ascenders are short, and descenders even shorter. The face is intended for headlines and has only limited use in text applications. The face bears comparison with the similarly designed, but narrower, typeface Haettenschweiler

Haettenschweiler

Haettenschweiler is a realist sans-serif typeface based on an uppercase metal-cast type called Schmalfette Grotesk . The face is named for Walter Haettenschweiler, who with Armin Haab, published the book Lettera which uses Schmalfette Grotesk.Haettenschweiler is often compared with Helvetica...

, the Letraset face Compacta

Compacta (typeface)

Compacta is a condensed sans-serif typeface designed by the type designer Fred Lambert. It was used on-screen by NBC Sports from 1991-95 and in the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Baywatch. It is available in light, regular, bold and black weights....

, and the Linotype face Helvetica

Helvetica

Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann.-Visual distinctive characteristics:Characteristics of this typeface are:lower case:square dot over the letter i....

 Inserat.

In July 2010, Ascender Corp introduced an enhanced version of Impact. It included extensive OpenType typographic features designed by Terrance Weinzierl and Steve Matteson.

Impact is one of the Core fonts for the Web

Core fonts for the Web

Core fonts for the Web was a project begun by Microsoft in 1996 to make a standard pack of fonts for the Internet. It was terminated in 2002. It included the proprietary fonts Andale Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana and...

 distributed with Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

; perhaps because of its ubiquity, it is commonly used in image macro

Image macro

In Internet culture, an image macro is a picture captioned with superimposed text for humorous effect.-Internet forums:On Internet forums and imageboards, image macros are used to emphasize a certain phrase by superimposing it over a related picture.-Formats:Although they come in many forms, the...

s.