Centaur

Centaur Jojo Maria George 134205015 M.des IIT Guwahati

Contents 1 Introduction

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2 Humanist 2 3 History 3 4 A Second Attempt

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5 Origin 5 6 Designer 6 7 Characteristic

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8 Usage of Centaur

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9 Reference 13

Introduction Centaur is a humanist type family originally drawn as titling

capitals by Bruce Rogers in 1914 for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The matrices were cut by Robert Wiebking and the type was privately cast by the American Type Foundry. The typeface is based upon several Renaissance models. Rogers’ primary influence for the Roman was Nicholas Jenson’s 1469 Eusebius, considered the model for the modern Roman alphabet.

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Humanist Humanist, humanistic, or humanes include the first Roman

typefaces created during the 15th century by Venetian printers, such as Nicolas Jenson (hence another name for these, Venetian).

These typefaces sought to imitate the formal hands found in the humanistic (renaissance) manuscripts of the time. These typefaces, rather round in opposition to the gothics of the Middle Ages, are characterized by short and thick bracketed serifs, a slanted cross stroke on the lowercase ‘e’, ascenders with slanted serifs, and a low contrast between horizontals and verticals.

Nicolas Jenson

The Humanist types (sometimes referred to as Venetian) appeared during the 1460s and 1470s, and were modeled not on the dark gothic scripts like textura, but on the lighter, more open forms of the Italian humanist writers. The Humanist types were at the same time the first roman types.

Low contrast between horizontal and vertical

slanded cross stroke

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short and thick bracketed serifs

History The genius of fifteenth-centu-

ry master printer and designer Nicholas Jenson served as the inspiration for Centaur, itself a classic of twentieth-century type design. In Monotype’s digital version, the beauty and communicative power of this classic typeface by Bruce Rogers is brilliantly preserved.

Types and resulting proof for 36 point Centaur (Bruce Rogers) and 18 point Goudy Old Style (Frederic Goudy).

Were it not for the typeface Centaur, Bruce Rogers would be remembered as one of America’s great book designers.

Consider Centaur, however, and Rogers earns his place in the ranks of America’s great typeface designers as well.

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While in Boston, Rogers saw a copy of Nicholas Jenson’s 1470 Eusebius in an exhibition at the Boston Public Library.

This prized incunable is generally regarded as one of the best examples of Jenson’s type in use. Rogers was so fascinated with the design that he hunted down the owner of the book to see if he could get a better look. The owner agreed, and even invited Rogers to his home to photograph a page from the book. (Rogers eventually acquired a copy of the Eusebius for himself.)

Rogers’ first typeface design (a font for Houghton Mifflin) was based on this photograph, but he wasn’t entirely pleased with the results. “The first proofs of the type were faintly disappointing to me,” he wrote, “...but Mr. Mifflin was delighted with the new type, and after several of the least successful letters were recut I decided it would have to do – for the time, at least – until I could have another try for my ideal type.”

A Second Attempt Ten years later, Rogers finally had “another try.” By this time he

had moved to New York and was working as a freelance designer.

For his second attempt at drawing a typeface based on the Eusebius types, he used enlarged copies of his photo prints as the basis for the design. Rogers wrote over the large lowercase characters repeatedly with a broad pen until he was satisfied that his hand, eye, and brain were familiar with the forms. Only then did he draw the letters on white paper.

Jenson’s roman typeface cut in 1470

These, and the capitals which he rendered more carefully, were the drawings Rogers sent to Robert Wiebking, the Chicago engraver and type designer (Rogers trusted Wiebking to craft the forms based on the intent of his drawings, without needing exact renderings).

Both of Rogers’ earlier versions of Centaur were roman-only designs, but at Rogers’ request, the Monotype version added an italic based on drawings by Frederic Warde. Warde’s italic is an interpretation of the work of the 16th century printer and calligrapher, Ludovico degli Arrighi.

In the 1990s, Monotype produced digital fonts based on the original drawings of Rogers and Warde, adding new bold and bold italic weights and a suite of alternate and swash characters. The Centaur type continues to be generally acclaimed as the best revival of Nicolas Jenson’s original design – a true Monotype masterwork.

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Origin

Calligraphic writing.

Book of hours late 1400s

Venetian printing.

Battista Cingulano’s hand, 1450

Eusebius, 1470

Centaur, 1914

Nicolas Jenson, 15th century designer of the Eusebius, which was Rogers’s inspiration, achieved acclaim as a publisher, printer, and type designer within his own lifetime. In 1468, he traveled to Venice and set up his press there. At that time, Johannes de Spira, Venice’s first printer, was granted the exclusive rights to print with roman type and produced the type that is one of the earliest classified as humanist because it has characteristics similar to calligraphic writing. After de Spira died in 1470, Jenson was free to use de Spira’s roman types and those of other great Venetian printers of the 15th century and began to produce his own groundbreaking type designs. Among Jenson’s most highly regarded works is the De Evangelica Præparationein Eusebius. One of the finest examples of the pristine proportion, clarity, and lightness inherent in the Jenson face, the manuscript has continued to influence designers up to the present day. For instance, Eusebius became the foundation of Rogers’s 1914 creation, Centaur.

Early uses of Centaur were exclusively for the signage and titling work produced at the Metropolitan Museum in New York as well as for Rogers’s personal book projects. It wasn’t until 1929 that a commercial version of Centaur was made available for machine composition by the English Monotype Company. In 1932, the Monotype version of Centaur first appeared in the book The Odyssey of Homer, one of Rogers’s most beautifully crafted books. A type designer at Adobe Systems, Robert Slimbach, also recreated a digital, multiple-mastered version of Jenson in 1990, called Adobe Jenson, based on the Eusebius type.

Adobe Jenson, 1990

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Designer Bruce Rogers

Bruce Rogers (1870 – 1957) was an American typographer and

type designer, acclaimed by some as among the greatest book designers of the twentieth century.[1] Rogers was known for his “classical” style of design, rejecting modernism, never using asymmetrical arrangements, rarely using sans serif typefaces, favoring stolid roman faces such as Caslon and his own Centaur. His books now fetch high sums at auction.

• WBruce Rogers – born 14. 5. 1870 in Lynnwood, USA, died 21. 5. 1957 in New Fairfield, USA – typographer, type designer, illustrator, artist.

• 1885–90: trains as an artist at Purdue College near Lynnwood.

• From 1894 onwards: produces graphics for “Modern Art” magazine.

• 1896: joins Riverside Press in Boston, founded in 1888.

• 1900–12: Riverside’s special prints achieve world acclaim under Roger’s management. Rogers designs over fifty book editions for the press, often using typefaces he has cut exclusively for some of the books (eg. Montaigne, Riverside Modern and Brimmer).

• Post-1912: frequent work for Metroplitan Press and Montague Press.

• 1915: designs the book “The Centaur” for Montague Press.

• 1917–19: works as printing adviser for Cambridge University Press in England and from 1920–28 for Harvard University Press. Works as a typographer for W. E. Rudge publishers in New York.

• 1929–31: works with Oxford University Press and Emery Walker. 1935: the Oxford Lectern Bible, designed by Rogers and set in his “Centaur typeface”, is published.

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Frederic Warde

American printer, typographer and type designer Frederic Warde

(born 1894 in Wells, Minnesota, USA, died 1939 in New York, USA) created the font . Bruce Rogers originally designed the exquisite, classical Centaur for the Metropolitan Museum in 1914.

The forms are based on those of the famous Renaissance printer Nicolas Jenson. The italic, designed in 1925 by Frederic Warde, was originally called Arrighi. Warde modeled the italic forms on the Italika of Ludovico Vicentino, a 16th century typeface. The capitals are more freely formed. If they had been based on the Italika, they would have been vertical. The elegant and harmonic Centaur was produced for Monotype. This modern, American book typeface is good for both long texts and headlines. Centaur is part of the Linotype Library. Centaur is a trademark of Monotype Typography.

After getting divorce from Beatrice Becker in 1926 Warde lived in France and Italy, where he became involved in Giovanni Mardersteig’s Officina Bodoni. Warde designed a revival of the chancery cursive letter forms of Renaissance calligrapher Ludovico degli Arrighi. This italic, titled Arrighi, was later used as a companion to Bruce Rogers’ roman typeface Centaur. In 1926 Mardersteig printedThe Calligraphic Manual of Ludovico Arrighi - complete Facsimile, with an introduction by Stanley Morison, which Warde issued in Paris while working for the Pleiad Press.

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Characteristics • Sloping cross-bar on the lowercase “e”; • Relatively small x-height; • Low contrast between “thick” and “thin” strokes (basically that means that there is little variation in the stroke width); • Dark colour (not a reference to colour in the traditional sense, but the overall lightness or darkness of the page). To get a better impression of a page’s colour look at it through half-closed eyes.

Although the influence of Humanist types is far reaching, they aren’t often seen these days. Despite a brief revival during the early twentieth century, their relatively dark color and small x-heights have fallen out of favor. However, they do deserve our attention — our admiration even — because they are, in a sense, the great grandparents of today’s types.

Stem

Apex

Axis

Shoulder

Counter

Finial SerifB

owl

Cap Hight X- Hight Base Line

Descenter

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Crossbar

Each typeface, including Centaur, has a set of its own unique characteristics. These characteristics make each individual typeface suitable for different uses. The tapering stems and unpredictable terminals of Centaur, in addition to the characteristics already discussed dictate what the typeface can be used for. Humanist typefaces are used mainly for advertisements and for small amounts of brochure copy. Their heavy weight, wide set, and calligraphic irregularities make themunsuited for continuous text reading.

R

tapering stems

concave top extended tail

b

Stepped joints

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M

9j

The uppercasr ‘M’ has sigle-sidedserif that points outwards

The ball of 9 does not close

Centaur is an oldstyle typeface meaning it is characterized by a small x-height, small contrast in weight, diagonal stress, and bracketed serifs. Although Centaur is known as an old style Renaissance typeface, it is widely used today and is considered of the times.

Main Characteristics are

The tail of lowercase ‘j’ pointed downwards

• Diagonal axis • Minimal variation in stroke • Bracketed serifs • Rounded fillet • Oblique serif • Slanded crossbar • Small x-hight

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Usage of Centaur

Bag and Exhibition Catalogues from The Metropolitan Museum of art. Today the museum uses a number of digital oldstyle typefaces that share several characteristics of Roger’s early museum press capitals and other fonts that he used in his book designs.

Title page from The Centaur Types, The October House, 1949

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Top: Cover for Fra Luca de Pacioli of Borgo S. Sepulcro by Stanley Morison, designed by Bruce Rogers using Centaur

Left: The first book to be set in Centaur was The Centaur,

by Maurice de GuĂˆrin, in an edition hand set by Mrs. Rogers and published by the Montague Press in 1915.

Rignht: Cover for H.G. Well’s The Door in the Wall, Set in Centaur

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Reference Anatomy of a Typeface By Alexander S. Lawson The Elements of Typographic Style by Bringhurst, Robert The Centaur Type by Bruce Rogers www.linotype.com www.fonts.com www.rightreading.com

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