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And how is she?
3
AND HOW IS SHE?
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Simple geometry: circles, lines and right angles make up all the letters, lower and upper case. These
quadrangular characteristics
can make it look rough, but the thickness of its lines and the simplicity make it close and pleasant to the eye. Among the slab serif or Egyptian, it turns out to be one of the most applicable to a large number of designs thanks to its versatility and modernism.
A correct use of it can send different messages or adopt different meanings, even opposite ones in different representations and that is what gives it its magic. A typeface that is capable of being interpreted as scientific,
fun, close, modern but retro,
warm and cold at the same time. It was lucky to be created the moment it was created. Some of its contemporaries like Paul Renner's Futura were also created by geometric shapes, but Rockwell found his own alternative path and achieved similar popularity to that of the giant Futura. Thanks to its popularity it had a great use in the first half of the 20th century, being used in documents and posters related to Modernism, architecture and design. The use of this typeface continues to form part of designs today, provoking feelings of nostalgia and longing for design eras of the past. Its square shapes and uniform looks send strong messages, meaning it is most effective when used in headlines.
Although it served as a body text typeface in the past, today there are mechanical typefaces that can work better at small sizes for continuous reading. Many attempts have been made to solve this problem, but Rockwell creates a very black typeface that is not comfortable to the eye on bodies of text.
A TYPE HAS BORN
Edylx
4ROCKWELL, A TYPE HAS BORN
HAS BORN
Some bibliographic sources say the appearance of the Rockwell typeface dates to 1934, under the creation of Frank Hinmann Pierpot, due to the few changes that it has undergone from that date to the present, but previous years fonts that have a close resemblance to the slab serif were already designed. One of them would be baptized years later as Rockwell. In January 1910, ITF launched one of its serif slabs under the name Litho Antique, designed by one of the founding brothers, William Schabstadter. From this moment, this typeface began to become popular and a large number of fonts began to be designed under the same design characteristics throughout Europe.
This made American Type Founders (ATF) to decide to redesign Litho Antique. The one in charge of its edition was the famous American typographer Morris Fuller Benton. He went on adding new characters to the original typeface and calling his result Rockwell Antique. It was published by ATF in 1931 and in that same year Benton continued to modify it, creating a new weight that he called Stymie Bold. A few years later, the British foundry Monotype decided to ‘make official’ the Rockwell Antique typeface, improving some of its aspects and creating a family around it. It was then that engineer Frank Hinman Pierpont created the ultimate design including new characters, new glyphs, differences in letter and word spacing, and of course, new weights and sizes.
The new typeface is a bit more condensed (narrower letter width) and the height of the x increases. However, the smooth stroke and square serifs kept their shape. Despite the quality of the redesign and the fame of the new Rockwell, one of its new weights had similarities to Benton’s old Stymie Bold and they started to get confused with each other {also because one of the Monotype documents mistook the Rockwell for the Styme Bold }. Although they differ in many things, this confusion still continues today. That is why it is important that we consider Frank Hinman Pierpont as the creator of the Rockwell typeface in 1934 within the British house Monotype.
