Trajan Pro 3

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TRAJAN® PRO 3 Presented by John D. Berry

The letters at the base of the Trajan column in Rome are generally regarded as the finest exam- ples of ancient Roman inscriptional lettering, and have served repeatedly as the models for capital letters throughout the history of typography. When Carol Twombly created the typeface Trajan for Adobe in 1989, her intention was to make as faithful an adaptation as possible, while turning letters that had been carved in stone into a digital font. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ RSTUVWXYZ & 1234567890

The Trajan typeface was wildly successful. Trajan is seen frequently in advertising and in book titles, and it has been especially popular for the past two decades on movie posters. In fact, Trajan seems to be used for just about every movie title that could possibly be contrived to have some connection with ancient Rome, and quite a few that couldn’t. The digital typeface varied from the carved letters in having a companion bold weight – something that didn’t exist in the ancient world, or indeed in the first centuries of printing. Today’s type users, however, expect to have fully fledged families of related typefaces at their fingertips; and since with digital type it’s easy to increase or decrease the size of the letters, sometimes a heavier weight holds up better at a smaller size than a light weight would. Trajan was never designed for text – it is purely a display typeface, and one best used big – but the bold weight, slightly heavier than the regular, gave designers a little more leeway in how they used the typeface. Although Carol Twombly has retired from designing type, Adobe has continued to consult her before embarking on any expansion of the typefaces she designed. In 2001, Adobe released Trajan Pro, in OpenType® format, with another variation: slightly smaller versions of each of the letters included as “small caps.” (Since Trajan has no lowercase, these smaller versions are much closer to the full cap size than most fonts’ small caps.) Now the palette has been expanded again. Principal designer Robert Slimbach has given Trajan four extra weights – two of them lighter than the original two weights, two of them heavier – as well as a companion series, Trajan Sans; and he has expanded their range to include Greek and Cyrillic along with the Latin alphabet.

G Ђ M ω ABCDEFGHIJKL Д С N Ц ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜ Ψ И Δ Е АБВГДЕЖЗИЙК У В Э

Origins & nature of the Trajan letters When the inscription on Trajan’s column was carved, in the 2nd century CE, it was part of a program of what today we might call branding. The most important part of the column, of course, was the spiral frieze of carved images, illustrating the emperor Trajan’s victorious campaigns against the Dacians; the plaque at the bottom, over a doorway in the base of the column, was basically a label, detailing the attributes of the divine Trajan and explaining that the Senate and the Roman people had dedicated this monument to the emperor. But the letters carved into that plaque represented a standard form of the written Latin language, a style of monumental inscription that could be found all across the empire. The arches and buildings and memorial cenotaphs that were adorned with such inscriptions embodied the might of Roman civilization, and that’s exactly what they were meant to do. Although the Romans used other styles of writing for other purposes, and although even inscriptional styles evolved over time, at the height of Roman power these square Roman capitals could almost be called the corporate typeface of Rome.

S·P·Q·R Top: Trajan inscription, circa 114 A.D. Above: Trajan Pro 3

Those letters served as a template in later centuries, even as Rome’s power crumbled and a variety of styles of writing and inscribing flourished. In 16th-century Italy, when all things Roman were being revived and reinvigorated in what we call the Renaissance, the Trajan capitals and other classical inscriptions were looked to explicitly as models of the ideal Latin letter. They influenced the development of the new art of typography. Renaissance lettering artists even tried to retrofit the Trajan forms into precise geometrical models – despite the fact that one of the strengths of the Trajan letters is that they are not strictly geometrical, but are instead subtly adapted to fit together and harmonize with each other. As the historian of letters Nicolete Gray put it, “the perfection of a Roman inscription consists in the perfection of the drawing of each letter, and in the order and clarity of the spacing.” Much more recently, in 20th-century Britain, the Trajan capitals had another heyday, notably inspiring the lettering of Edward Johnston and Eric Gill. This influence continued into the pho- totype and digital-type eras; in the explosion of type design in recent decades, the Trajan forms have been adapted and referred to again and again by type designers. The Trajan letters are characterized, according to Nicolete Gray, by “the modulated width of the letter-line, the small bracketed serifs, and the proportions, approximately 10:1:1⁄2 for the relation- ship between the height, and the widest, and the narrowest, width of the letter-line.” They are clear, easily identifiable letters, with almost no decorative flourishes, and they march across the stone in a stately progression, the spacing between letters carefully calculated for easy reading and maximum effect. Yet the chiseled lines are not simple. There has been a lot written about the Trajan letters and how they might have been created. The generally accepted theory is the one espoused by Fr. Edward Catich in The Origin of the Serif: that before carving, the letter shapes were initially drawn on the stone with a brush, and that the serif came from the natural motion of ending a brushstroke. Certainly there were other forms of serifs in less formal lettering styles, as shown by the brush-written rustic lettering found in Pompeii. Wherever the serifs originated, they are an integral part of the effect, along with the modulation of the strokes, the generous interior spaces of the rounded and square letters, and the way they were placed in a vertical surface for reading from below. Even the weather and the time of day must have had an effect, as the angle of the sunlight changed and the shadows increased or decreased in the V-shaped channels of the inscribed letters. The effect would have been somewhat different from what we see today. It’s worth recalling that originally, the carved letters on the Trajan column and other Roman monuments were painted, as were the bas-relief figures on the column’s frieze; we are used to seeing both Roman and Greek sculpture as weathered white marble, but that’s not the way they were seen by the people of their time. The color of paint commonly used in inscriptional lettering was vermilion, a bright orange-red, which would have made the inscription stand out like a billboard. On some other Roman inscriptions, the carved channels were filled in with letters made of bronze. But in later centuries, after the empire’s fall, the bronze was pried off and melted down, and the ubiquitous paint simply wore away over time. So the Renaissance artists and scholars who looked to these ancient inscriptions for inspiration saw the same colorless stone that we do today.

Using Trajan Pro 3 Like most of the Adobe Originals® type families, Trajan Pro 3 is intended to give graphic designers an extended set of typographic tools, or what Slimbach has called “an extended suite of expressive voices.” The six weights of Trajan Pro provide a much wider range of effects than the simple Regular/Bold of the original Trajan. Obviously, all of the weights other than the Regular have different proportions of stroke weight to height and width than the original Trajan capitals; finding the right weights and making them look harmonious was the principal design challenge. From Extra Light to Bold, the new weights form a continuous series (with the original Trajan Bold renamed Semibold to describe it more accurately within this range).

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q A B C D E R S T U V W F G H I J K L M N O P X Y Z A B C D E Q R S T U V F G H I J K W X Y Z А Б В Г Д Е L M N O P Ж З И Й К Q R S T U V А Б В Г Д Е Л M Н О W X Y Z П Р С Т У Ф Ж З И Й К Л M Н О Х Ц Ч Ш А Б В Г Д Е П Р С Т У Щ Ъ Ы Ь Ж З И Й К Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Э Ю Я Л M Н О Щ Ъ Ы Ь П Р С Т У Э Ю Я Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Щ Ъ Ы Ь Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Э Ю Я Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Ψ Ω Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Ψ Ω Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π A B C D E Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ F G H I J K Ψ Ω L M N O P Q R S T U V A B C D E F W X Y Z G H I J K L M N O P Q A B C D E F А Б В Г Д Е R S T U V W G H I J K L Ж З И Й К X Y Z M N O P Q Л M Н О R S T U V W П Р С Т У А Б В Г Д Е X Y Z Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Ж З И Й К Щ Ъ Ы Ь Л M Н О А Б В Г Д Е Э Ю Я П Р С Т У Ф Ж З И Й К Х Ц Ч Ш Л M Н О Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Щ Ъ Ы Ь П Р С Т У Ф Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Э Ю Я Х Ц Ч Ш Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Щ Ъ Ы Ь Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Э Ю Я Ψ Ω Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Χ Ψ Ω Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Ψ Ω

*Greyed blocks indicate original language coverage and weights.

Trajan Black is something of an anomaly: because of the small size of the counters in such a heavy letter, notably in the A, it looks chunkier, more informal, almost like a sort of Fat Face. Although its serifs are bracketed, like the other Trajan serifs, in the Black weight they are so thin compared to the thick strokes that they give a very different appearance to the letters; there isn’t an extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, yet those tiny serifs suggest such an effect. It will be inter- esting to see where Trajan Pro Black gets put to use the most, once it is in designers’ hands. TRAIANVS TRAIANVS

The other weights will probably be used much the way Trajan is used today, but with a lighter or a heavier weight chosen to fit a particular circumstance (Light or Extra Light at very large sizes, Semibold or Bold at smaller sizes). The weight range also makes it possible to set one word or phrase in contrast to the rest of the line, while still setting the whole passage in Trajan. Besides the “small” caps, Trajan Pro has a number of alternate characters, such as an even longer-tailed Q, a double-T ligature, and even a double-N ligature (which should be used judi- ciously). It has an extended Latin character set far beyond anything the letter carvers of Trajan’s column ever imagined, suitable for setting text in most of the languages that use the Latin alphabet today, as well as Greek (which they might have imagined) and Cyrillic (which was still centuries in the future in Trajan’s time).

Latin Alternates Default Latin Glyphs CENTEΝΝIAL CENTENNIAL STONECUΤΤER STONECUTTER GROVE & HILL GROVE & HILL JONES & JONES JONES & JONES VELASQUEZ VELASQUEZ

Greek Alternates Default Greek Glyphs HΦΑΙΣΤΟΣ HΦΑΙΣΤΟΣ ΣΥΜΦΟΡΕΣ ΣΥΜΦΟΡΕΣ

Cyrillic Alternates Default Cyrillic Glyphs ΦРАНЦИИ ФРАНЦИИ ОФИЦИАЛЬНОЙ ОФИЦИАЛЬНОЙ БУРЖУАЗИИ БУРЖУАЗИИ

Extending Trajan into Greek and Cyrillic was an exercise in imagination, since there are no com- parable inscriptions in those scripts (except perhaps modern ones imitating ancient inscriptions). For Trajan Pro, the letters that these related alphabets have in common look the same in each; the rest of the letters follow well-understood principals of multilingual type design, with Slimbach consulting with experts in Greek (Gerry Leonidas) and Cyrillic (Maxim Zhukov) who have both contributed widely to the quality of multilingual type design in the digital era. (Adobe’s Frank Grießhammer provided technical production support for both Latin and non-Latin forms.) As Zhukov has pointed out, there is some precedent in modern Cyrillic typographic design: a number of Russian type designers in the mid-20th century, notably Vadim Lazurski and Solomon Telingater, tried their hand at adapting the Trajan style to the Cyrillic alphabet. More recently, of course, Trajan forms, like virtually all currently available styles, have shown up in Cyrillic digital type. “I think,” says Zhukov, “that in Russia (and other countries where Cyrillic is used) the stylistic and historical connotations of Trajan are exactly the same as in the West.” The one addition to Trajan Pro that Slimbach has resisted is a condensed version. The demand exists; everyone likes to have multiple widths of a good display typeface. But as Carol Twombly pointed out, the proportions of the Trajan capitals are fundamental to their nature, and are really the main reason why we look to them as a standard worth emulating. A “Trajan Condensed” would be a contradiction in terms. (Needless to say, just mechanically squeezing or stretching the Trajan letterforms would do violence to their graceful design.) There are plenty of other display typefaces with narrower proportions; there are even models for condensed forms to be found in other lettering styles from ancient Rome. They just wouldn’t work as an extension of Trajan. With Trajan Pro 3, Adobe has brought the classic Trajan letters into a new range of weights and into two new but related scripts, which makes Trajan Pro a versatile tool for graphic design across a variety of languages and situations. Like any display typeface, Trajan Pro needs to be used carefully, with respect for its underlying forms and its basic purpose. Trajan is not a jack of all trades, but it is well suited for any display purpose that recalls its inscriptional origins and gives it enough space to breathe.

John D. Berry is a typographer, book designer, editor, and design writer living in Seattle. He is the former editor & publisher of U&lc (Upper and lower case) and a former program manager with the Fonts team at Microsoft. He has edited several books on design and has won numerous awards for his book designs. He writes and consults extensively on typography. He is president of ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale).

ЄΦA Я M R УBP Э Θ JΞQ Д SN Ж И Υ Σ TIЗΔ E ΨΓ Б &Ђ Λ

Sample Art and Text Settings

View a PDF of the sample art shown below. (PDF, 55 KB)

View a PDF of the text settings shown below. (PDF, 71 KB)

View a PDF of the the other illustrations on this page. (PDF, 236 KB)

Excellence is an art won by training and BЭИ habituation. Excellence We do not is an art Волгоград act rightly won by because we training and have virtue habituation. or excellence, We do not but we rather act rightly have those because we because have virtue we have or excellence, acted rightly. but we rather We are have those what we because repeatedly do. we have Водка «Синий кристалл» Excellence, acted rightly. ВЕЛИКИЙ ПРОСПЕКТ, САНКТ-ПЕТЕРБУРГ then, is not We are an act what we but a habit. repeatedly do. Excellence, Aristotle then, is not an act but a habit. ЗАБАЙКАЛЬСКИЙ Aristotle национальный парк

Δημοκριτος

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И ПУСТЬ У ГРОБОВОГО ΦΑΡΑΓΓΙ ΣΑΜΑΡΙΑΣ ВХОДА МЛАДАЯ SAMARIÁ GORGE БУДЕТ ЖИЗНЬ ИГРАТЬ, И РАВНО- ДУШНАЯ ΜΟΥΣΕΙΟ ΑΚΡΟΠΟΛΗΣ ПРИРОДА КРАСОЮ

ВЕЧНОЮ ✴ ✴ СИЯТЬ. ✴ ✴ ✴

ПУШКИН ✴ ✴ ΤΡΑΠΕΖΑ ΤΗΣ ΚΑΒΑΛΑ ΕΥΡΩΣΥΣΤΗΜΑ

THE·HIGGS BOSON

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AERO GOBE

GALLERIA NAZIONALE D’ARTE ANTICA МОСКОВСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ ΣAΝ ΠAΝΤΡΕΥΑΝ ΤHΝ ΘEΤΙΔΑ ΜE ΤOΝ ΠΗΛEΑ MUSEO NAZIONALE L.PIGORINI РОССИЙСКАЯ ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКАЯ АКАДЕМИЯ ΣΗΚΩΘΗΚΕ O AΠOΛΛΩΝ ΣΤO ΛΑΜΠΡO ΤΡΑΠEΖΙ NATIONAL ETRUSCAN MUSEUM OF VILLA GIULIA ТОМСКИЙ ПОЛИТЕХНИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ ΤΟΥ ΓAΜΟΥ, ΚAI ΜΑΚAΡΙΣΕ ΤΟΥΣ ΝΕΟΝΥΜΦΟΥΣ MUSEO NAZIONALE D’ARTE ORIENTALE МАГНИТОГОРСКАЯ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННАЯ КОНСЕРВАТОРИЯ ΓΙA ΤOΝ ΒΛΑΣΤO ΠΟΥ ΘAΒΓΑΙΝΕ ΑΠ’ ΤHΝ EΝΩΣI ΤΩΝ

GALLERIA NAZIONALE D’ARTE ANTICA МОСКОВСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ ΣAΝ ΠAΝΤΡΕΥΑΝ ΤHΝ ΘEΤΙΔΑ ΜE ΤOΝ ΠΗΛEΑ MUSEO NAZIONALE L.PIGORINI РОССИЙСКАЯ ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКАЯ АКАДЕМИЯ ΣΗΚΩΘΗΚΕ O AΠOΛΛΩΝ ΣΤO ΛΑΜΠΡO ΤΡΑΠEΖΙ NATIONAL ETRUSCAN MUSEUM OF VILLA GIULIA ТОМСКИЙ ПОЛИТЕХНИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ ΤΟΥ ΓAΜΟΥ, ΚAI ΜΑΚAΡΙΣΕ ΤΟΥΣ ΝΕΟΝΥΜΦΟΥΣ MUSEO NAZIONALE D’ARTE ORIENTALE МАГНИТОГОРСКАЯ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННАЯ ΓΙA ΤOΝ ΒΛΑΣΤO ΠΟΥ ΘAΒΓΑΙΝΕ ΑΠ’ ΤHΝ EΝΩΣI ΤΩΝ

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