How to query COUNT

If I want to find out how many items of a field is in a table like Type1, Type2... to build a table like

Type1, 10
Type2, 25
...

Is is better to open the table -> Select Type From Table

and then go down each row and record the count of a type or is it better to

Select Distinct Type from table to get the types and then do each type's select to get the count

Select Count (1) from table where type = 'Type?'

Thanks,

FrankUse COUNT and GROUP BY