Opinionated Font Facts

OPINIONATED FONT FACTS Research and writing: Alissa Faden with Ellen Lupton Baskerville is a transitional serif typeface designed by the English gentleman printer John Baskerville in 1757. Basker- ville had also mastered the craft of engraving headstones, a knowledge that influenced his design process. His letters are sharply detailed with a vivid contrast between thick and thin elements. During his lifetime, Baskerville’s letters were denounced as extremist, but today we think of Baskerville as a classic, elegant, and easy to read font. Baskerville’s life- style was also regarded with suspicion: he was a professed agnostic living out of wedlock (see Mrs Eaves). Bodoni, created by Giambattista Bodoni in the 1790s, is known as a modern typeface. It has nearly flat, unbracketed serifs, an extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, and an overall vertical stress. Compared to Garamond, which is based on handwriting, Bodoni is severe, glamorous, and dehumanized. Similar typefaces were also designed in the late eighteenth century by François Ambroise Didot and Justus Erich Walbaum. Caslon is named for the British typographer William Caslon, whose typefaces were an eighteenth-century staple and a personal favorite of Benjamin Franklin (who also enjoyed the racier innovations of John Baskerville). The U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were first printed in Caslon’s types. Classified as transitional, Caslon has strong vertical elements and crisp serifs. Adobe Caslon, designed by Carol Twombly in 1990, transports Caslon’s solid Anglo pedigree into the digital age. Centaur was designed by Bruce Rogers between 1912 and 1914, inspired by the work of the fifteenth-century Venetian printer Nicolas Jenson. Emphatically calligraphic, Centaur is paired with the italic Arrighi, designed by Frederic Warde. Centaur was commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for printing the museum’s ephemera. It is called Centaur because it was used in a 1915 publication of Maurice de Guerin’s poem of the same name. Century Expanded was created in 1900 by Morris Fuller Benton, who was trained as a mechanic and engineer and became a leading designer during the early years of the American Type Foundry. The Century family is so called because it was initiated by Morris’s father, Linn Boyd Benton, for Century magazine. Classified as Egyptian owing to its slab serifs, Century Expanded maintains its substance and openness at small sizes. It is often used in children’s books. Clarendon, named for The Clarendon Press that commissioned its design in 1845, is classified as an Egyptian typeface. It has heavy, slab serifs and ball terminals on the arms of some letters. This stocky, functional, Victorian face can be seen in early advertisements as well as in dictionary entries. HTF Didot was created by Jonathan Hoefler in 1992, inspired by the late eighteenth-century designs of Francois Ambroise Didot. It has an overall vertical stress, extreme contrast from thick to thin, and unbracketed serifs. Hoefler created different styles for use at different sizes, enabling the typeface to maintain its distinctive character across wildly divergent scales, from enormous letters on the side of a bus to tiny text on the pages of a magazine. Each font is represented by a number that lets the user know the smallest point size at which it should be used. Fedra Sans was designed by Peter Bilak in 2001. Bilak was commissioned by Reudi Baur Integral Design to develop a corporate face for the German insurance company Bayerische Rück. The design brief required a “de-protestantized Univ- ers.” Bilak, a Czech-born designer working in the Netherlands, sought to create a face that would work equally well on screen and on paper, and at both small and large sizes. The Fedra type family includes at least 35 variations. Filosofia was created in 1998 by Zuzana Licko for Émigré. She sought to create a contemporary take on Bodoni that holds up at small sizes, rather than disintegrating along its thin strokes. In Licko’s words, “ Filosofia is my interpretation of a Bodoni. It shows my personal preference for a geometric Bodoni, while incorporating such features as the slightly bulging round serif endings which often appeared in printed samples of Bodoni’s work and reflect Bodoni’s origins in letterpress technology.” Frutiger, designed by the Swiss designer Adrian Frutiger in 1976, was first used for signage at Charles de Gaulle Airport. This descendant of an eariler Frutiger typeface, Univers, differs in its smaller capitals and longer-looking ascenders and descenders. It has a more relaxed and humanistic character than the severe and stalwart Univers. Franklin Gothic, designed in 1902 by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders , is one of the most popular sans-serif types ever produced. Named after Benjamin Franklin, it is a weighty sans-serif font often used for headlines. ATF later gave ITC permission to create additional weights for the Franklin Gothic family. Matthew Carter created a re- fined version of Franklin Gothic for use in the graphic identity of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Futura was designed by the German typographer Paul Renner in 1927. This geometric sans-serif font embodies Bauhaus ideals in a practical, commercially viable typeface. Futura has round O’s and a capital M, N, and W with sharply pointed peaks and valleys. Renner, who viewed Futura as an appropriate typeface for the machine age, streamlined the alphabet by eliminating the tail from lowercase t and j. Georgia, designed by Matthew Carter in 1996, is the serif companion to his sans serif font Verdana. Commissioned by Microsoft and created specifically for on-screen reading, it maintains clarity at small sizes and at low screen resolutions. It has a more vibrant character and open quality than Times, another common default face for Web designers. Gill Sans was created by the English designer Eric Gill in 1928. Its forms are more humanistic, less geometric, than its German contemporary Futura. Note how the lowercase a relates to the a in Garamond (in contrast to the circular a of Fu- tura). Additionally, Gill Sans is recognized by its flared capital R and the closed descender of the lowercase g. Gills Sans has been called Britain’s Helvetica; it remains today an overwhelmingly popular typeface across the United Kingdom. Garamond is the name for typefaces based on pages printed by Claude Garamond in sixteenth-century France. Many versions of Garamond were created in the twentieth century, including Adobe Garamond, designed by Robert Slimbach in 1989, and ITC Garamond, a distinctly 1970s version with a grossly enlarged x-height. Adobe Garamond honors the pro- portions of its Renaissance source while translating the face for modern use. Note the elegant, three-dimensional bowl of the lowercase a and the gap in the uppercase P. Gotham , designed by native New Yorker Tobias Frere-Jones in 2000, is derived from letters found at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan. Espousing a no-nonsense, utilitarian attitude, Hoefler & Frere-Jones describe Gotham as “a typeface that is friendly without being folksy, confident without being aloof.” Gotham garnered national press when it was chosen as the official typeface for inscribing the Freedom Tower, to be built at the site of the World Trade Center. Helvetica was designed in 1957 by Max Meidinger. This deliberately anonymous typeface is one of the world’s most commonly used fonts, with variations created for both Latin and non-Latin characters. Its solid, upright forms are tem- pered by surprising curves in the lowercase a and the uppercase R. Helvetica has a generous x-height and is available in numerous weights and styles. It was called Neue Haas Grotesk before getting its current name, Helvetica, in the early 60s, which is the Latin word for “Switzerland.” Hoefler Text, designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 1995, is a family of twenty-seven typefaces. This elegant humanistic font with a moderate x-height and lovely decorative elements was commissioned by Apple Computer and is distributed with the Mac OS. According to Hoefler & Frere-Jones, the font is “steeped in the virtues of classical book typography.” We think of Hoefler Text as the big brother of Mrs Eaves. Interstate was designed by Tobias Frere-Jones for Font Bureau in 1993. Like Gotham, it is based in the American working-class vernacular. Interstate is loosely based on the font family Highway Gothic, used by the United States Fed- eral Highway Administration for road signs. It is thus rooted in a common American experience of public space. It has a forthright capital R (compare to Helvetica), and its acsenders are clipped at an angle. Adobe Jenson, designed by Robert Slimbach in 1995, revives the roman types of the fifteenth-century Venetian printer Nicolas Jenson and the italics of his contemporary Ludovico degli Arrighi. Adobe Jenson expresses its Renaissance roots in a less mannered and decorative way than Centaur, another Jenson revival. Meta was designed by Erik Spiekermann in 1991, who was especially concerned with the use of his typeface at small sizes. Initially, Meta was only used for in-house projects at Spiekermann’s design consultancy MetaDesign. It was later used in mail-order catalogs for FontShop, a digital font foundry started by Spiekermann that eventually licensed the face. Meta became widely used across Europe and the U.S. in the 1990s. Mrs Eaves, designed by Zuzana Licko in 1996, was inspired by the eighteenth-century typefaces of John Baskerville. The tiny x-height of Mrs Eaves rejects the inflationary trend that dominated twentieth-century type design. Mrs Eaves has three sizes of capitals (regular, small, and petite) as well as numerous “fanciful ligatures” (in the words of Zuzana Licko).

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