g ara mo d Garamond Through the Ages
CONTENTS Pg
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The Designer: Claude Garamond
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The Typeface: A Short History
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The Typeface: Specific Features
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The Typeface: How is it Different
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Garamond: Works-Cited
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1 (Featured to the Left) Claude Garamond Woodcut Illustration Artist Unknown c. 1480-1561
THE DESIGNER:
CLAUDE GARAMOND Claude Garamond, the master type designer, was born in 1480 and died in 1561 in Paris, France. He was the first punch cutter to work independently of printing firms. Designed with such perfection, Garamond’s roman typefaces allowed French printers in the sixteenth century to print books of extraordinary legibility and beauty. Claude Garamond is credited, by the sheer quality of his fonts, with a major role in eliminating Gothic styles from compositor’s cases all over Europe. Thanks to his powerful designs, Garamond’s typefaces are still widely used hundreds of years after their initial creation.
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ABC DE F 80 pt.
abc def
100 pt.
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ABCD
ABCD
ABCD
8 pt.
10 pt.
12pt.
abcd
abcd
abcd
13 pt.
15 pt.
16 pt.
abcd
abcd
abcd
13 pt. Bold
14 pt. Bold
16 pt. Bold
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO PQRSTUVWXYZ abcdef ghijklmnopqrst uvwxyz 1234567890 14 pt.
“Typographic beauty & readability”
(Featured to the Left) Modern Garamond Point Size Samples
Around 1530, Garamond established his independent type foundry to sell to printers cast type ready to distribute in the compositor’s case. This was a first step away from the “scholar-publisher-type-foundryprinter-bookseller,” all in one that began in Mainz some eighty years earlier. The fonts Garamond cut during the 1540’s achieved a mastery of visual form and a snugness of fit that allowed closer word spacing, and a harmony of design between capitals, lowercase, and italic. These types permitted books such as the French book Poliphili, printed by Jacques Kerver in 1546, to maintain their status as benchmarks of typographic beauty and
readability to this day. The influence of writing as a model diminished in Garamond’s work, for typography was an evolving language of form rooted in the processes of making steel punches, casting metal type, and printing instead of imitating forms created by hand gestures with an inked quill on paper. Old age did not treat Garamond kindly, though, and he was desperately poor when he died at age eightyone. His widow sold his punches and matrices. Selling his work in such an uncontrolled manner no doubt contributed to the wide use of his original fonts, which remained a major influence until the late 1700’s. 7
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2 (Featured to the Left) Original Roman Garamond c. 1592
THE TYPEFACE:
A SHORT HISTORY In 1530 Garamond’s first type was used in an edition of the book Paraphrasis in Elegantiarum Libros Laurentii Vallae by Erasmus. The design was based on Aldus Manutius’s type “De Aetna,” cut in 1455. In 1540, King Francis I commissioned Garamond to cut a Greek type. Garamond’s ensuing Grec du Roi was later used by Robert Estienne, a Parisian scholar-printer, in three sizes exclusively for the printing of Greek books. The Garamond designs of the 1550’s were used in numerous Estienne books, winning praise from many other book printers and gaining widespread acclaim.
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THE TYPEFACE:
SPECIFIC FEATURES The original Garamond letter forms, as well as many other roman types of the 16th century, are classified as Garalde or old style. A horizontal bar on the ‘e’, bracketed serifs, axis curves that are inclined to the left, and no table contrast between thick and thin strokes are all typical features of this style. Traits particular to Garamond include the small bowl of the ‘a’, small eye of the ‘e’, and the downward slope of most top serifs. These attributes are fairly consistent among all variations of Garamond, including its modern versions such as Adobe Garamond and Garamond ITC.
Small Eye
great Downwards Slope of Serif
Small Bowl
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THE TYPEFACE:
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT Opinion varies regarding the role of Claude Garamond in the development of the range of contemporary typefaces that bear his name. To the right, two contemporary versions of Garamond are shown: ITC Garamond, and Adobe Garamond. Tony Stan’s Garamond ITC, designed in 1970, is remarkable in the balance struck by its full and thin strokes, and the regularity of its serifs, lightly rounded and simultaneously concave in their horizontal angles. The counters, wide and open, the equilibrium of proportions between the median and baseline, the harmonious aspect of the regular rounded elements coalesce to make this typeface an
excellent display font, something Apple was clearly aware of since it remained its display face of choice during Steve Jobs’ stay with the company. As shown to the right, it is clear that ITC Garamond is much thicker and larger than both the original Garamond as well as Adobe Garamond, even when all are all featured at the same point size (155 pt). Adobe Garamond, however, is pretty close to the original Garmond—apart from the dulled serif angles, rounded as though to reproduce the lead stamp on paper after multiple uses. Through these modern versions, Garamond is still influential today.
type t ype t ype
Garamond
ITC Garamond
Adobe Garamond
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GARAMOND:
WORKS CITED Gabor, Peter. “Garamond v Garamond Physiology of a Typeface.” Gara mond v Garamond. N.p., 3 Feb. 2006. Web. 7 Apr. 2015.
. Jaspert, W. Pincus. The Encyclopaedia of Typefaces. Poole, Dorset: Blandford Press; New York: Distrib uted in the U.S.
“Garamond.” Prepressure Garamond Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2015.
Lawson, Alexander S. Anatomy of a typeface. Boston: D.R. Godine, 1990
Friedl, Friedrich. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type design and Techniques Throughout History. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 1998.
Monotype Corporation. Garamond: A Specimen of a Classic Letter Reproduced in Eight Sizes for use on the “Monotype.” London: Lanston Monotype Corporation, 1926.
Haley, Allan. Typographic Milestones. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992.
(Featured to the Left) Garamond Regular 550 Pt. Large scale Garamond shows the irregularities and hand-made touch of the typeface.
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Ashley Profozich Set in the Typeface Garamond Washington University in St Louis Typography I Spring 2015 16