AF
Andrian Frutiger
(1928-2015)
Life:
Adrian Johann Frutiger, a Swiss typeface designer. He was born in Unterseen, Canton of Bern, the son of a weaver. As a boy, he experimented with invented scripts and stylized handwriting in a negative reaction to the formal, cursive penmanship then required by Swiss schools. His father and his secondary school teachers encouraged him to pursue an apprenticeship rather than pure art. After initially planning to train as a pastry chef, Frutiger secured an apprenticeship at the Otto Schlaefli printing house in Interlaken. At the age of sixteen, he was apprenticed for four years, as a compositor, to the printer Otto Schlaeffli in Interlaken, also taking classes in woodcuts and drawing at the Gewerbeschule in Bern under Walter Zerbe, followed by employment as a compositor at Gebr, Fretz in Zürich, Switzerland. In 1949 he transferred to the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich, where he studied under Walter Käch, Karl Schmid and Alfred Willimann until 1951. Students there studied monumental inscriptions from Roman forum rubbings. At the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich, Frutiger concentrated on calligraphy, a craft favouring the nib and the brush, instead of drafting tools, but also began sketches for what would become Univers, influenced by the sans-serif types popular in contemporary graphic design. As in an interview, Frutiger described himself as a Calvinist. Frutiger spent most of his professional career working in Paris and living in France, returning to Switzerland later in life and died on 10 September 2015 in Bremgarten bei Bern, at the age of 87.
Career:
Charles Peignot, recruited Frutiger based upon the quality of the illustrated essay Schrift /Écriture / Lettering: the development of European letter types carved in wood, Frutiger’s final project at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich. Frutiger’s wood-engraved illustrations of the essay demonstrated his skill, meticulousness, and knowledge of letter forms. At Deberny & Peignot foundry, Frutiger designed the typefaces Président, Méridien, and Ondine. In addition, Charles Peignot sat Frutiger to work upon converting extant typefaces for the new phototypesetting Linotype equipment. Adrian Frutiger’s first commercial typeface was Président, a set of titling capital letters with small, bracketed serifs, released in 1954. A calligraphic, informal, script face, Ondine, also was released in 1954. In 1955, Méridien, a glyphic, old-style, serif text face was released. The typeface shows inspiration by Nicolas Jenson, and, in the Méridien type, Frutiger’s ideas of letter construction, unity, and
Andrian Frutiger*
organic form, are first expressed together. Raph Levien described as a “Frutiger trademark” common use of an “a” where the loop makes a horizontal line at the top on meeting the vertical. It makes use of narrow wedge serifs, a style sometimes known as Latin which Frutiger would often use in his future serif designs. In 1956, he designed his first-of-three, slab-serif Egyptienne, on the Clarendon model; after Univers, it was the second, new text face to be commissioned for photo-composition.
the Paris * Métro signage by adrian frutiger
Charles Peignot envisioned a large, unified font family, that might be set in both the metal and the photo-composition systems. Impressed by the success of the Bauer foundry’s Futura typeface, Peignot encouraged a new, geometric sans-serif type in competition. Frutiger disliked the regimentation of Futura, and persuaded Peignot that the new sans-serif should be based on the realist (neo-grotesque) model. The 1898 face, Akzidenz-Grotesk, is cited as the primary model. To maintain unity across the 21 variants, each weight and width, in roman (upright) and oblique (slanted), was drawn and approved before any matrices were cut. In the Univers font, Frutiger introduced his two-digit numeration; the first digit (3 though 8) indicates the weight, “3” the lightest, “8” the heaviest. The second digit indicates the face-width and either roman or oblique. It was marketed with a design inspired by the periodic table. The response to Univers was immediate and positive; he claimed it became the model for his future typefaces. His slab serif designs Serifa (1967) and Glypha (1977) are directly based upon it. Univers attracted attention to Frutiger’s work outside continental Europe, and he was commissioned by Monotype to create Apollo, their first typeface specifically created for phototypesetting, which was released in 1964. Moving on, Frutiger designed a number of signage projects in the 1970s. These included an adaptation of Univers for the Paris Métro, after the RATP, the public transport authority of Paris, asked Frutiger to examine the Paris Métro signage. He created a Univers font variation, a set of capitals and numbers specifically for white-on-dark-blue backgrounds in poor light. He also designed a slab serif font for the Centre Georges Pompidou. Frutiger’s 1984 typeface Versailles is an old-style serif text with capitals like those in the earlier Président. Versailles is a Latin design with sharp wedge serifs, based on a popular genre in 19thcentury printing.
In 1991, Frutiger finished Vectora, a design influenced by Morris Fuller Benton’s type faces Franklin Gothic and News Gothic. The resultant face has a tall x-height and is legible in small-point sizes. Frutiger’s 1991 release Linotype Didot was an elegant revival of the Didot typeface adapted to display use, which remains popular; it is the version of Didot bundled with OS X, for example. While Frutiger continued to be involved in adaptations and expansions of pre-existing families and smaller projects, he described Didot in 1998 as his “last typeface design”. In 2009, Frutiger collaborated with Akira Kobayashi on a second re-release of Frutiger, Frutiger Neue, which moved back towards the original 1970s release. Through his later years, Frutiger collaborated with co-authors Heidrun Osterer and Philipp Stamm on an extensive autobiography, Typefaces: the Complete Works (2008, republished 2014).
Typefaces:
A display design inspired by Arabic calligraphy for Deberny & Peignot in 1954. A script face reminiscent of gothic cursive writing from the middle ages. Ondine was a sea nymph from Nordic mythology. Like her namesake, Ondine the typeface has gently swelling main strokes, sharp terminals, un-closed bowls in round letters, and the illusion of a very slight backslant.
In 1952, Charles Peignot made a bold and fortuitous move: he invited a young Swiss designer to Paris to be the art director of the Deberny & Peignot type foundry. This started the professional type design career of Adrian Frutiger; and since then he has designed an astonishing range of masterful typefaces. One of the earliest for Deberny & Peignot was Président, a sharp-seriffed Latin titling face. “Latin” is a typographic designation for roman typefaces with wedge or triangular-shaped serifs, a stylistic form that Frutiger would return to later with his beautiful typeface Méridien. Président has wide, solid shapes; very little contrast between thick and thin strokes; and an air of assurance.
Roman
MĂŠridien was developed in the mid1950s, and released by the French foundry Deberny & Peignot in 1957. After studying a typeface from the sixteenth century, Adrian Frutiger was inspired to create an alphabet without any completely straight strokes, and he hoped the reader of a text set in this typef-ace would feel as though wandering through a forest. The designer of more than 100 typefaces, Frutiger considers MĂŠridien to be his best. With its slightly flared stems and triangular shaped serifs, it is at once sharp, graceful, arresting, and sensuous; much like a forest.
Italic
Medium Medium Italic
Bold Bold Italic
A humanist slab-serif design
Light
Black
a slab serif based on the Univers family. heartiness to produce a good impression.
Roman
Italic
Bold Roman
Semibold
Light
Is wide-open apertures between strokes, in contrast to the more folded-up design of Univers.
Designed by Adrian Frutiger and appeared with D. Stempel AG in 1977. The font consists of ten cuts and is formally based on its predecessor, Serifa, although its lower case letters are a bit larger. Like Serifa, Glypha is also based on the general scheme used to design Univers.
Roman
Thin
Other typefaces by Andrian Frutiger: Iridium (1975): a Didone serif text face. Its flared style suggests the irregularity of metal type, an approach that would become very popular in the 1990s. Icone (1980): a wedge serif design. Almost monoline, but with a gentle flare of strokes. Breughel (1982): an old-style serif inspired by the Renaissance. Nami (2006): a playful unicase sans. Based on sketches from the 1980s and developed in collaboration with Akira Kobayashi. Frutiger Arabic (2007): designed by Lebanese designer Nadine Chahine in consultation with Frutiger. It is based on the Kufi style. Westside (1989): a complete departure, a Wild Westthemed slab serif on the French Clarendon model. Frutiger had been considering creating such a design for many years before its release. Versailles (1982) Linotype Centennial (1986) Avenir (1988) Herculanum (1990) Vectora (1990) Linotype Didot (1991) Pompeijana (1992) Rusticana (1993) Frutiger Stones (1998) Frutiger Symbols (1998) Linotype Univers (1999) Frutiger Next (2000) Frutiger Serif (2008) Neue Frutiger (2009) Univers Next (2010)
CG
Claude Garamond (c. 1510–1561) Life:
Claude Garamont, known commonly as Claude Garamond, was a French type designer, publisher and punch-cutter based in Paris. Garamond worked as an engraver of punches, the masters used to stamp matrices, the moulds used to cast metal type. He worked in the tradition now called old-style serif design, which produced letters with a relatively organic structure resembling handwriting with a pen but with a slightly more structured and upright design. Considered one of the leading type designers of all time, he is recognised to this day for the elegance of his typefaces. Garamond’s early life has been the subject of some research and considerable uncertainty . Dates as early as 1480 and as late as c. 1510 have been proposed for his birth, the latter being preferred by the French ministry of culture. In favour of a later date, his will of 1561 states that his mother was then still alive. He married twice, to Guillemette Gaultier and, after her death, to Ysabeau Le Fevre. Garamond may have apprenticed with Antoine Augereau and was perhaps also trained by Simon de Colines. He later worked with Geoffroy Tory, whose interests in humanist typography and the ancient Greek capital letterforms, or majuscules, may have informed Garamond’s work. Garamond came to prominence around 1540, when three of his Greek typefaces (now called the Grecs du roi (1541)) were requested for a royally-ordered
Many old-style serif typefaces are collectively known as Garamond, named after the designer.
career:
Garamond was one of the first independent punchcutters, specialising in type design and punch-cutting as a service to others rather than working in house for a specific printer. He also worked as a publisher and bookseller. While his italics have been considered less impressive than his roman typefaces, he was one of the early printers to establish the modern tradition that the italic capitals should slope as the lower case does, rather than remain upright as Roman square capitals do. book series by Robert Estienne. Garamond based these types, now known as the Grecs du roi, on the handwriting of Angelo Vergecio, the King’s Librarian at Fontainebleau. The result is an immensely complicated set of type, including a vast variety of alternate letters and ligatures to simulate the flexibility of handwriting. Garamond worked for a variety of employers on commission, creating punches for publishers and the government. Garamond’s typefaces were popular abroad, and replaced Griffo’s original roman type at the Aldine Press in Venice.
Estienne’s 1550 edition of the New Testament was typeset with Garamond’s grecs du roi.[9] The result is one of the most sophisticated pieces of printing in the history of metal type, quite unlike Garamond’s structured, upright designs in the Latin alphabet.
The first book Garamond published was called, “Pia et Religiosa Meditatio” by David Chambellan. His career therefore helped to define the future of commercial printing with typefounding as a distinct industry to printing books.
After his death:
In November 1561, following his death, his equipment, punches, and matrices were inventoried and sold off to purchasers including Guillaume Le Bé, Christophe Plantin, and André Wechel. His wife was forced to sell his punches, which caused the typefaces of Garamond to become widely used for two centuries, but often with attributions becoming highly confused. The chaotic sales caused problems, and Le Bé’s son wrote to Plantin’s successor Moretus offering to trade matrices so they could both have complementary type in a range of sizes.
Egelhoff-Berner brought out a specimen in 1592 of types by Garamond and others, which would later be a source for many Garamond revivals. The only major collection of original Garamond material in the Latin alphabet is that collected soon after his death by Christophe Plantin, based in Antwerp. This collection of punches matrices now forms a major part of the collection of the PlantinMoretus Museum in Antwerp, together with many other typefaces collected by Plantin from other typefounders of the period. The collection has been used extensively for research, for example by historians Harry Carter and H. D. L. Vervliet.
Garamond roman, France 1540
Garamond italic, France 1540
Various cuts of Garamond: Caracteres de l’Universite by Jean Jannon, 17th century; ATF Garamond, 1917; Garamont by Goudy,1923; English Monotype Garamond, 1922; Stempel Garamond, 1924, Linotype Granjon, 1925
CT
Carol Twombly (1959-present)
Life:
Carol Twombly is an American designer, best known for her type design. She worked as a type designer at Adobe Systems from 1988 through 1999, during which time she designed, or contributed to the design of, many typefaces, including Trajan, Myriad and Adobe Caslon. Twombly retired from Adobe and from type design in early 1999, to focus on her other design interests, involving textiles and jewelry.
Education:
Carol Twombly was born June 13, 1959 in Concord, Massachusetts. She attended and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where she first studied sculpture, and later changed her major to graphic design. She credits her professors Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes, whose studio she worked in, for her inspiration and stimulating her interest in typography. Gerard Unger, a visiting instructor at RISD during Twombly’s time as a student, also influenced her work.At Stanford University Twombly was one of only five people to graduate from the short-lived digital typography program with Masters of Science degrees in computer science and typographic design.
Career:
Twombly joined Adobe in 1988. One of her first projects at Adobe was Trajan. As a designer, Twombly closely studied historical scripts for inspiration in creating digital fonts. She successfully translated Roman inscriptions, stone carvings on Trajan’s column into a modern digital design: the typeface Trajan, in 1989. She next drew upon her background as a calligrapher and interest in paleography to translate Carolingian versals, or decorative capital letters, into a digital typeface called Charlemagne (also in 1989). The specific source was a page of the Anglo-Saxon Benedictional of Saint Aethelwold in the British Library. Similarly, Twombly based Lithos on historical precedents, although more generally to ancient Greek inscriptions, rather to any specific models. Adobe marketed Trajan, Charlemagne, and Lithos as “Modern Ancients”. In designing Adobe Caslon, she also worked closely with the wellknown eighteenth-century typeface designed by the William Caslon foundry to create a modern digital equivalent. She collaborated with Robert Slimbach to create the sans serif Myriad, her first completely original typeface design.
Under Twombly’s art direction, fonts such as Ponderosa, Pepperwood, Zebrawood, and Rosewood, were part of an Adobe project to revive American display typefaces in wood type from the 1880s. After this series, she went on to design two more typefaces for Adobe: Nueva, an original design, and Chaparral, which references nineteenth-century slab serif forms and sixteenth-century roman book hand, a calligraphic form. She designed Chaparral in collaboration with calligrapher Linnea Lundquist. Twombly left Adobe in 1999. Speaking in 2014, she cited a variety of reasons for the decision, including a lack of interest in designing fonts for onscreen display and the market failure of Adobe’s multiple master font technology. She is currently an independent artist, specializing in drawing, painting on textiles, beading shekeres, and basket-making.
Typefaces:
printed by William Caslon between 1734 - 1770.
combination of flowing curves and powerful angularity.
Inscriptions honoring public figures or dedicating temples were intended for public viewing in ancient Greece. Geometric letterforms, free of adornment, were chiseled into the stone. These very basic shapes are the inspiration for Lithos Pro, an Adobe Originals typeface designed by Carol Twombly. The original Lithos design has been extremely popular since its 1989 release. To meet user demand, Lithos Pro, released in 2000, adds true Greek language support, plus small caps and small figures.
Some typefaces are mysterious, like this one— its origins are an enigma wrapped within a riddle, indeed. While its letterforms may be shrouded in secrecy, this design is sure to make a fine addition to your typographic arsenal, so we recommend you go try it out. A handsome, rhythmic calligraphic design, winner of a competition sponsored by Morisawa, designed in 1984 by Carol Twombly, then at the Bigelow & Holmes studio.
During the reign of the Emperor Charlemagne in the eighth and ninth centuries, the use of classical roman letterforms was revived. These letterforms were the basis of the highly refined versal capitals of late tenth-century England, which were the inspiration for Carol Twombly’s 1989 Adobe Originals typeface. Charlemagne has spiky serifs, but retains clean lines and proportions. Its considerable charm makes it ideal for advertising, packaging, and other display uses that require a unique look.
Nueva, designed by Carol Twombly in 1994, was originally conceived as a potential lowercase companion to her 1990 titling typeface Charlemagne. Nueva came into its own with a contemporary kinetic lowercase with its own capitals to match. Nueva has very high stroke contrast, with round, bouncy counterforms and stroke shapes, particularly in the wider instances. The low connecting joins of the arches on h, m, n, r, b, d, p and q are characteristic of some calligraphic designs, and this combined with rounded bowls and tapering stems makes Nueva unique among roman typefaces; the accompanying italic is a true italic design.
Trajan is an elegant typeface well-suited for display work in books, magazines, posters, and billboards.
The inscription on the base of the Trajan column in Rome is an example of classic Roman letterforms, which reached their peak of refinement in the first century A.D. It is believed that the letters were first written with a brush, then carved into the stone. These forms provided the basis for this Adobe Originals typeface designed by Carol Twombly in 1989.
Viva, designed by Carol Twombly, was released in 1993 as the first open-face design in the Adobe Originals Library. The display possibilities are essentially unlimited in advertising, book titles, posters, and any display material that needs an original look.
EB
Edward Benguiat (1927-2020) Life:
Ephram Edward Benguiat (October 27, 1927 – October 15, 2020) was an American typographer and lettering artist. He crafted over 600 typeface designs including Tiffany, Bookman, Panache, Souvenir, Edwardian Script, and the eponymous Benguiat and Benguiat Gothic. He was also known for his designs or redesigns of the logotypes for Esquire, The New York Times, Playboy, McCall’s, Reader’s Digest, Photography, Look, Sports Illustrated, The Star-Ledger, The San Diego Tribune, AT&T, A&E, Coke, Estée Lauder, Ford, and others. Other notable examples of Benguiat’s work are the logotypes for the original Planet of the Apes film, Super Fly and The Guns of Navarone, and the typeface for the opening credits for Stranger Things. Also his “Benguiat Caslon” was used in the logo of Foxy Brown. Benguiat was born in Brooklyn, New York on October 27, 1927 to Rose and Jack Benguiat. His mother was a driver with the Red Cross, and his father was a display director in the department store chain Bloomingdale’s. He was exposed to design elements as early as nine, with access to his father’s design tools. Although he was not old enough to enlist for the armed forces during World War II, he enlisted using a forged birth certificate and served in the Air Corps. He was stationed in Italy as a radio operator, and later performed photo reconnaissance.
Career:
Benguiat started out his career as a jazz percussionist playing in bands with the likes of Stan Kenton and Woody Herman. In an interview, he stated of his chosen career as a designer: “I’m really a musician, a jazz percussionist. One day I went to the musician’s union to pay dues and I saw all these old people who were playing bar mitzvahs and Greek weddings. It occurred to me that one day that’s going to be me, so I decided to become an illustrator.” He started his design career by working, in his words, as a “cleavage retoucher” during the restrictive period after World War II, when the Hays Code imposed restrictions on nudity in motion pictures. His role involved airbrushing and other techniques to do away with nudity in published works. He went on to study graphical design, calligraphy, and typography at the Workshop School of Advertising Art under the Russian-American graphical artist and calligrapher Paul Standard.
Typefaces: He was hired as a designer by Esquire magazine magazine in 1953 and subsequently went on to join Photo Lettering Inc. as a design director in 1962. It was here that he worked on utilizing photo technology for commercial typography and lettering. He helped set up the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) in 1970, as an independent licensing company and served as a vice president. Over his career, he was one of the most prolific lettering artists, crafting over 600 typeface designs including Tiffany, ITC Bookman, Panache, Souvenir, Edwardian Script, and the eponymous Benguiat and Benguiat Gothic. His Benguiat family was considered synonymous with Stephen King’s works in the 1980s, and used in the logo and opening credits of Stranger Things. It was also used for the main credits in Star Trek Generations and Star Trek: First Contact. Benguiat’s design aesthetic included dramatic display typefaces, tight spacing, also known as “tight but not touching” or “sexy spacing”, and the very high x-heights popular in design in the 1970s, sometimes with flamboyant swashes, all features which were common in ITC’s typefaces. These styles are also seen in the design of Herb Lubalin, another of ITC’s co-founders. Gene Gable commented “You could easily say that ITC designs put a face on the ’70s and ’80s...You couldn’t open a magazine or pass a billboard in the ’70s without seeing [them].” Benguiat was a teacher at the School of Visual Arts, in New York, starting in 1961 and serving for over 50 years. He was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame in 2000.
Most of Benguiat’s published work was released through International Typeface Corporation. This includes ITC Barcelona, ITC Benguiat, ITC Benguiat Gothic, ITC Bookman, ITC Caslon No. 224, ITC Century Handtooled, ITC Edwardian Script, ITC Modern No. 216, ITC Panache, ITC Souvenir, ITC Tiffany. In addition, there were collaboration releases including ITC Avant Garde (condensed styles only), ITC Bauhaus (with Victor Caruso), ITC Cheltenham Handtooled (with Tony Stan), ITC Korinna (with Victor Caruso), ITC Lubalin Graph (with Herb Lubalin). The Ed Benguiat Font Collection is a casual font family designed by Benguiat and released by House Industries. The collection includes a series of whimsical icons, dubbed “bengbats”. Unlike Benguiat’s earlier, pre-computer work, the family uses extensive OpenType programming to replicate the feel of custom lettering or manual phototypesetting, similar to classic film posters and record sleeves. Some of the fonts in this collection included:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
EG
Eric Gill
(1882-1940) Life:
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill ARA (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was an English sculptor, typeface designer, and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. His religious views and subject matter contrast with his sexual behaviour, including his erotic art, and (as mentioned in his own diaries) his extramarital affairs and sexual abuse of his daughters, sisters, and dog. Gill was named Royal Designer for Industry, the highest British award for designers, by the Royal Society of Arts. He also became a founder-member of the newly established Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry.
Education:
Gill studied at Chichester Technical and Art School, and in 1900 moved to London to train as an architect with the practice of W. D. Caröe, specialists in ecclesiastical architecture. Frustrated with his training, he took evening classes in stonemasonry at the Westminster Technical Institute and in calligraphy at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, where Edward Johnston, creator of the London Underground typeface, became a strong influence. In 1903 he gave up his architectural training to become a calligrapher, letter-cutter and monumental mason. Gill’s first apprentice in 1906 was Joseph Cribb (1892–1967) a sculptor and letter carver, who came to Ditchling with Gill in 1907. Hilary Stratton, was an apprentice sculptor between 1919 and 1921.
Career:
Working from Ditchling in Sussex, where he lived with his wife, in 1910 Gill began direct carving of stone figures. These included Madonna and Child (1910), which English painter and art critic Roger Fry described in 1911 as a depiction of “pathetic animalism”, and Ecstasy (1911). Such semi-abstract sculptures showed Gill’s appreciation of medieval ecclesiastical statuary, Egyptian, Greek and Indian sculpture, as well as the Post-Impressionism of Cézanne, van Gogh and Gauguin. yeah so, One of Gill’s first independent lettering projects was creating an -
- alphabet for W.H. Smith’s sign painters. In 1925, he designed the Perpetua typeface, with the uppercase based upon monumental Roman inscriptions, for Morison, who was working for the Monotype Corporation. An in-situ example of Gill’s design and personal cutting in the style of Perpetua can be found in the nave of the church in Poling, West Sussex, on a wall plaque commemorating the life of Sir Harry Johnston. He designed the Gill Sans typeface in 1927–30, based on the sans-serif lettering originally designed for the London Underground. (Gill had collaborated with Edward Johnston in the early design of the Underground typeface, but dropped out of the project before it was completed.) In the period 1930–31, Gill designed the typeface Joanna which he used to hand-set his book, An Essay on Typography.
These dates are somewhat debatable, since a lengthy period could pass between Gill creating a design and it being finalised by the Monotype drawing office team (who would work out many details such as spacing) and cut into metal. In addition, some designs such as Joanna were released to fine printing use long before they became widely available from Monotype.
British Railways sign at Lowestoft railway station in Gill Sans.
: s e c efa
Typ
Gill Sans, 1927–30; many variants followed Perpetua (design started c. 1925, first shown around 1929, commercial release 1932) Perpetua Greek (1929) Golden Cockerel Press Type (for the Golden Cockerel Press; 1929) Designed bolder than some of Gill’s other typefaces to provide a complement to wood engravings.
Solus (1929) Joanna (based on work by Granjon; 1930–31, not commercially available until 1958) Aries (1932) Floriated Capitals (1932) Bunyan (1934) Pilgrim (recut version of Bunyan; 1953) Jubilee (also known as Cunard; 1934)
The family Gill Facia was created by Colin Banks as an emulation of Gill’s stone carving designs, with separate styles for smaller and larger text. One of the most widely used British typefaces, Gill Sans, was used in the classic design system of Penguin Books and by the London and North Eastern Railway and later British Railways, with many additional styles created by Monotype both during and after Gill’s lifetime. In the 1990s, the BBC adopted Gill Sans for its wordmark and many of its on-screen television graphics.
Arabic:
Gill was commissioned to develop a typeface with the number of allographs limited to what could be used on Monotype or Linotype machines. The typeface was loosely based on the Arabic Naskh style but was considered unacceptably far from the norms of Arabic script. It was rejected and never cut into type.
Gill Sans
Perpetua
FG
Frederic Goudy (1865-1947)
Life:
Frederic William Goudy (March 8, 1865 in Bloomington, Illinois – May 11, 1947 in Marlborough-on-Hudson) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. *
Bioghraphy:
Goudy was not always a type designer. “At 40, this short, plump, pinkish, and puckish gentleman kept books for a Chicago realtor, and considered himself a failure. During the next 36 years, starting almost from scratch at an age when most men are permanently set in their chosen vocations, he cut 113 fonts of type, thereby creating more usable faces than did the seven greatest inventors of type and books, from Gutenberg to Garamond.”
Career:
First significant typeface for the Lanston Monotype Machine Company: E-38, sometimes known as Goudy Light. However, in that same year the Village Press burned to the ground, destroying all of his equipment and designs. In 1911, Goudy produced his first “hit”, Kennerley Old Style, for an H. G. Wells anthology published by Mitchell Kennerley. This success was followed by Goudy’s release of the titling letter Forum. Both Kennerley and Forum were cut for private use. Although Goudy was one of the first type designers to become established without working for a foundry, the American Type Founders Company(ATF) became interested in Goudy after his release of Kennerley and Forum. ATF commissioned Goudy to create a typeface. Goudy agreed “on the condition that his original drawings would not be subjected to interference by the founder’s drawing room”. This commission would become Goudy Old Style. Goudy Old Style was released in 1915 and became an instant success. (cite) It was well suited for newspaper’s advertising sections because of its efficient use of space. ATF continued to expand the Goudy ‘family’ to Goudy Title in 1917, Goudy Bold in 1920, Goudy Catalogue in 1921, Goudy Handtooled in 1922 and Goudy Extrabold in 1927. Goudy types were clearly very lucrative for ATF, but Goudy did not receive anything because he had sold his original design for $1,500 instead of entering into a royalty agreement. ATF’s refusal to give Goudy compensation for the success of the Goudy family led to the deterioration of Goudy’s relationship with ATF. The only other typefaces Goudy designed for ATF was Goudytype, and series of initial letters, named Cloister Initials. * A brochure cover hand-lettered by Goudy in the early 1900s.
Typefaces: Goudy was the third most prolific designer of metal type in the United States (behind Morris Fuller Benton and R. Hunter Middleton), with ninety faces actually cut and cast, and many more designs completed. His most famous were Copperplate Gothic and Goudy Old Style.
Copperplate Gothic
Goudy Old Style
Goudy’s career was influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement and the growth of fine book printing in the United States. At a time when printing types had become quite mechanical and geometric under the influence of Didone designs such as Bodoni, Goudy spent his career developing old-style serifs often influenced by the printing of the Italian Renaissance and calligraphy, with a characteristic warmth and irregularity. His sans-serif series, Goudy Sans, adopts an eccentric humanist style with a calligraphic italic. Quite unlike most sans-serif types of the period, it was unpopular in his lifetime but revived several times since. In 1938 he designed University of California Old Style, for the sole proprietary use of the University of California Press. The Lanston Monotype Company released a version of this typeface as Californian for wider distribution in 1956, while ITC created a well-known adaptation (and expansion) called Berkeley Old Style or ITC Berkeley, in 1983. William T. LaMoy, a curator at Syracuse University, discovered two sets of matrices (metal molds) and associated paperwork in Syracuse University Library’s archives for a font known as Sherman, which the publisher Frederic Fairchild Sherman had commissioned from Goudy in 1910. LaMoy published an article about this discovery in 2013, explaining how, in the 1960s, Sherman’s niece bequeathed the font to Syracuse University because she was aware of Goudy’s connection to the university. Indeed, in 1934, Syracuse University had awarded Goudy an honorary degree and, from the journalism school, a typographic medal for excellence. Recently Syracuse University adopted and digitized the Sherman typeface and is now using it for official publications. Called the Sherman Serif Book, it is a proprietary font for Syracuse University.
“Printing” by William Morris, as reprinted by the Village Press, run by Goudy with Will Ransom, c. 1903
GB
Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) Life:
Giambattista Bodoni (26 February 1740 in Saluzzo – 30 November 1813 in Parma) was an Italian typographer, type-designer, compositor, printer, and publisher in Parma. Bodoni’s birthplace is set in the foothills of the Cottian Alps, in what was then Kingdom of Sardinia, and is now Piedmont. He was the seventh child and fourth son of Francesco Agostino Bodoni and Paola Margherita Giolitti. His father and grandfather were both printers in Saluzzo, and as a child his toys were his grandfather’s leftover punches and matrices. He learned the printing trade working at his father’s side, and his gift for wood-engraving and printing was evident very early. So was his ambition and liveliness. At the age of 17 he decided to travel to Rome with the intention of securing fame and fortune as a printer. He left Saluzzo on 8 February 1758.
Career:
In Rome, Bodoni found work as an assistant compositor (typesetter) at the press of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples), the missionary arm of the Vatican. He flourished under the careful supervision of Cardinal Giuseppe Spinelli, the prefect of the
Propaganda Fide, and Costantino Ruggieri, the superintendent of the press. One of his first tasks was sorting and cleaning punches in a wide variety of Middle Eastern and Asian languages. Bodoni quickly demonstrated his gift for exotic languages and, as a result, he was sent to study Hebrew and Arabic at “La Sapienza,” (Sapienza University of Rome). Bodoni soon became the press’s compositor of foreign languages, and began to typeset books. Spinelli and Ruggieri were so delighted with his work on the “Pontificale Arabo-Copto” that they allowed him to add his name and birthplace to subsequent printings. He then began cutting his own punches. He first took the type-designs of Pierre Simon Fournier as his exemplars, but afterwards became an admirer of the more modelled types of John Baskerville; and he and Firmin Didot evolved a style of type called “Modern,” in which the letters are cut in such a way as to produce a strong contrast between the thick and thin parts of their body. Bodoni designed many typefaces, each one in a large range of type sizes. He is even more admired as a compositor than as a type designer, as the large range of sizes which he cut enabled him to compose his pages with the greatest possible subtlety of spacing. Like Baskerville, he sets off his texts with wide margins and uses little or no illustrations or decorations.
Bodoni achieved an unprecedented level of technical refinement, allowing him to faithfully reproduce letterforms with very thin “hairlines”, standing in sharp contrast to the thicker lines constituting the main stems of the characters. He became known for his designs of pseudoclassical typefaces and highly styled editions some considered more apt “to be admired for typeface and layout, not to be studied or read.” His printing reflected an aesthetic of plain, unadorned style, combined with purity of materials. This style attracted many admirers and imitators, surpassing the popularity of French typographers such as Philippe Grandjean and Pierre Simon Fournier. Bodoni has also had his share of detractors, including William Morris, who felt that his almost mechanical perfection seemed cold and inhumane.
The largest Bodoni font of all (in honor of Saluzzo).
Bodini The Bodoni™ font is a well-known serif typeface series that has had a long history of interpretations by many design houses. The various font styles
begin with Bodoni’s original Didone modern font in the late 1700s through to ATF’s American Revival in the early 1900s and into the digital age. The original design had a bold look with contrasting strokes and an upper case that was a bit more condensed then its stylish influence Baskerville®. The unbracketed serifs and even geometric styling has made this a popular font seen in almost every kind of typesetting situation, but particularly well suited for title fonts and logos.
styles
sample:
HE
Hermann Eidenbenz (1902–1993) Life:
Hermann Eidenbenz – born 4. 9. 1902 in Cannanore, India, died 25. 2. 1993 in Basle, Switzerland – graphic artist, teacher. He was one of the first persons in Switzerland to describe himself as a graphic designer. From the first half of the 20th century into the 1950s, he was involved in graphic design education in Zurich, Magdeburg, Basel, and Brunswick, first as a student and later as a teacher. The didactic material from Eidenbenz’s time as a teacher of graphic design published here throws light on this discipline at a time before graphic design in Switzerland had achieved international recognition.
Career:
1918–22: studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich. 1923–25: graphic artist for Wilhelm Deffke in Berlin. 1925–26: graphic artist for Ol H. W. Hadank in Berlin. 1926–32: teacher of type and graphics at the Kunstgewerbeschule Magdeburg. 1932_53: has a graphics studio in Basle with his brothers Reinhold and Willy. 1937: works on the Swiss pavilion for the world exhibition in Paris. 1940–43: teaches at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule in Basle. 1953–55: teaches at the Werkkunstschule and at the Technische Hochschule in Braunschweig. 1955–67: art director and advertising consultant for the Reemtsma company in Hamburg. Eidenbenz designed numerous posters, logos, and also bank notes for Switzerland and Germany.
Clarendon Bold
Clarendon
Graphique
HZ
Hermann Zapf (1918-2015)
Life:
Hermann Zapf (8 November 1918 – 4 June 2015) was a German type designer and calligrapher who lived in Darmstadt, Germany. He was married to the calligrapher and typeface designer Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse. Zapf was born in Nuremberg during turbulent times marked by the German Revolution of 1918–1919 in Munich and Berlin, the end of World War I, the exile of Kaiser Wilhelm, and the establishment of Bavaria as a free state by Kurt Eisner. In addition, the Spanish flu pandemic took hold in Europe in 1918 and 1919. Two of Zapf’s siblings died of the disease. Famine later struck Germany, and Zapf’s mother was grateful to send him to school in 1925, where he received daily meals in a program organized by Herbert Hoover. In school, Zapf was mainly interested in technical subjects. One of his favorite books was the annual science journal Das neue Universum (The New Universe). He and his older brother experimented with electricity, building a crystal radio and an alarm system for his house. Even at this early age, Zapf was already getting involved with type, inventing cipher alphabets to exchange secret messages with his brother. Zapf left school in 1933 with the ambition of pursuing a career in electrical engineering. However, his father had become unemployed and was in trouble with the newly established Third Reich, having been involved with trade unions, and was sent to the Dachau concentration camp for a short time.
Career:
Under the new political regime, Zapf was not able to attend the Ohm Technical Institute in Nuremberg, and therefore he needed to find an apprenticeship. His teachers, aware of the new political difficulties, noticed Zapf’s skill in drawing and suggested that he become a lithographer. Each company that interviewed him for an apprenticeship would ask him political questions, and every time he was interviewed, he was complimented on his work but was rejected. Ten months later, in 1934, he was interviewed by the last company in the telephone directory, and the company did not ask any political questions. They also complimented Zapf’s work, but did not do lithography and did not need an apprentice lithographer. However, they allowed him to become a retoucher, and Zapf began his four-year apprenticeship in February 1934. In 1935, Zapf attended an exhibition in Nuremberg in honor of the late typographer Rudolf Koch. This exhibition gave him his first interest in lettering. Zapf bought two books there, using them to teach himself calligraphy. Soon, his master noticed his expertise in calligraphy, and Zapf’s work shifted to retouching lettering and improving his colleagues’ retouching. Zapf taught calligraphy in Nuremberg in 1946. He returned to Frankfurt in 1947, where the type foundry Stempel offered him a position as artistic head of their printshop. They did not ask for qualifications, certificates, or references, but instead only required him to show them his sketchbooks from the war and a calligraphic piece he did in 1944 of Hans von Weber’s “Junggesellentext”.
Typefaces & samples:
Palatino
Optima
JB
John Baskerville (1707-1775) Life:
John Baskerville (baptised 28 January 1707 – 8 January 1775) was an English businessman, in areas including japanning and papiermâché, but he is best remembered as a printer and type designer.
Career:
John Baskerville printed works for the University of Cambridge in 1758 and, although an atheist, printed a splendid folio Bible in 1763. His typefaces were greatly admired by Benjamin Franklin, a fellow printer. Baskerville’s work was criticised by jealous competitors and soon fell out of favour, but since the 1920s many new fonts have been released by Linotype, Monotype, and other type foundries – revivals of his work and mostly called ‘Baskerville’. Emigre released a popular revival of this typeface in 1996 called Mrs Eaves, named for Baskerville’s wife, Sarah Eaves. Baskerville’s most notable typeface Baskerville represents the peak of transitional type face and bridges the gap between Old Style and Modern type design. Baskerville also was responsible for significant innovations in printing, paper and ink production. He worked with paper maker James Whatman to produce a smoother whiter paper which showcased his strong black type. Baskerville also pioneered a completely new style of typography adding wide margins and leading between each line. “Having been an early admirer of the beauty of Letters, I became intensely desirous of contributing to the perfection of them.”
Typefaces:
JH
Jonathan Hoefler (1970-present) Life:
Jonathan Hoefler (born in August 22, 1970) is an American typeface designer. Hoefler founded the Hoefler Type Foundry in 1989, a type foundry in New York.
Career:
Hoefler’s Champion Gothic was inspired by 19th century wood type. It was commissioned for Sports Illustrated shortly after founding the company in 1989. In 1997, his path crossed with type designer Tobias Frere-Jones when both were trying to purchase German type foundry catalogs. In 1999, Hoefler began working with Frere-Jones, and from 2005–2014 the company operated under the name Hoefler & Frere-Jones as a partnership. In 2000, the firm, under Frere-Jones’ direction, designed its ubiquitous Gotham typeface for GQ magazine and received wide recognition for their work and in the last 20 years is one of the most successful typefaces. Hoefler’s process when designing typefaces begins with research into historical records and then utilize the programming language Python to automate repetitive tasks. Their typefaces are systematic and logical and incorporate specific features based on their research. Hoefler has designed original typefaces for Rolling Stone, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, and Esquire and several institutional clients, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and alternative band They Might Be Giants. Perhaps his bestknown work is the Hoefler Text family of typefaces, designed for Apple Computer and now appearing as part of the Macintosh operating system. He also designed the current wordmark of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In January 2014, Frere-Jones sued Hoefler for $20 million in the New York Supreme Court accusing him of scamming Frere-Jones. Frere-Jones claimed that in 1999, Hoefler agreed to a verbal 50-50 partnership that was legally binding. In light of the lawsuit, Hoefler changed the name back to Hoefler & Co claiming Frere-Jones had only been an employee, citing an agreement that they weren’t partners but “independent entities” and asked the court to dismiss the case. Fans of the foundry were shocked by the news of the lawsuit. They later settled in September of 2014.
Typefaces:
Gestalt, 1990 Champion Gothic, 1990 Hoefler Text, 1991 Ideal Sans, 1991 Ziggurat, 1991 Leviathan, 1991 Mazarin, 1991 HTF Didot, 1992 Requiem Text, 1992 Saracen, 1992 Acropolis, 1993 NYT Cheltenham, 1993 Knox, 1993 Historical Allsorts, 1994 Knockout, 1994 Fetish, 1994 Neutrino, 1994 Quantico, 1994 Oratorio, 1994 Troubadour, 1994 William Maxwell, 1994 Deseret, 1995 Jupiter, 1995
Pavisse, 1995 Verlag (formerly Guggenheim), 1996 Giant (formerly They Might Be Gothic), 1996 New Amsterdam, 1996 Hoefler Titling, 1996 Plainsong, 1996 Kapellmeister, 1997 Numbers (with Tobias Frere-Jones), 1997– 2006 Mercury, (with Tobias Frere-Jones), 1997 Radio City, 1998 Vitesse. (with Tobias Frere-Jones), 2000 Deluxe, 2000 Cyclone, 2000 Topaz, 2000 Lever Sans. (with Tobias Frere-Jones), 2000 Archer, (with Tobias Frere-Jones), 2001 Chronicle, (with Tobias Frere-Jones), 2002 Sentinel, (with Tobias Frere-Jones), 2002 Inkwell, (with Jordan Bell), 2017 Decimal, 2019
Requiem Like many other typefaces designed by Hoefler & Co., the family is large, intended for professional use. It is designed with three separate optical sizes of font, intended for different sizes of text, as well as two different styles of capitals inside cartouches intended for title pages and frontispieces. It also contains fleurons and italic ligatures inspired by calligraphy, as well as stylistic alternates such as an alternative ‘Y’ character. Like typefaces of the period in which Arrighi worked, it does not contain a bold style, as these were only invented in the nineteenth century.
Hoefler Text Released free with every Mac during the growth of desktop publishing, at a time when producing printed documents was becoming dramatically easier, Hoefler Text raised awareness of type features previously the concern only of professional printers.New York magazine commented in 2014 that it “helped launch a thousand font obsessives.” Hoefler Text was used in the Wikipedia logo until the 2010 redesign, when it was replaced with Linux Libertine.
JT
Jan Tschichold (1902-1974) Life:
Jan Tschichold (born Johannes Tzschichhold, also known as Iwan Tschichold, or Ivan Tschichold; 2 April 1902 – 11 August 1974) was a calligrapher, typographer and book designer. He played a significant role in the development of graphic design in the 20th century – first, by developing and promoting principles of typographic modernism, and subsequently (and ironically) idealizing conservative typographic structures. His direction of the visual identity of Penguin Books in the decade following World War II served as a model for the burgeoning design practice of planning corporate identity programs. He also designed the much-admired typeface Sabon.
Career:
Tschichold was the son of a provincial signwriter, and he was trained in calligraphy. In 1919, he began in the class of Hermann Delitzsch a study on the “Leipzig Academy of the arts”. Due to his extraordinary achievements, he soon became a master pupil of the rector of Walter Tiemann – a font designer for the Gebr.-Klingspor foundry and was commissioned to his fellow students. At the same time, he received the first orders in the framework of the “Leipziger Messe” and in 1923 set up his own business as a typographic consultant to a print shop. This artisan background and calligraphic training set him apart from almost all other noted typographers of the time, since they had inevitably trained in architecture or the fine arts. It also may help explain why he never worked with handmade papers and custom fonts as many typographers did, preferring instead to use stock fonts on a careful choice from commercial paper stocks.
Design:
Tschichold had converted to Modernist design principles in 1923 after visiting the first Weimar Bauhaus exhibition. He became a leading advocate of Modernist design: first with an influential 1925 magazine supplement mentioned above); then a 1927 personal exhibition; then with his most noted work Die neue Typographie. This book was a manifesto of modern design, in which he condemned all typefaces but sans-serif. He also favoured non-centered design (e.g., on title pages), and codified many other Modernist design rules. He advocated the use of standardised paper sizes for all printed matter, and made some of the first clear explanations of the effective use of different sizes and weights of type in order to quickly and easily convey information. This book was followed with a series of practical manuals on the principles of Modernist typography which had a wide influence among ordinary workers and printers in Germany. Yet, despite his visits to England just before the war, only about four articles by Tschichold had been translated into English by 1945. Although Die neue Typographie remains a classic, Tschichold slowly abandoned his rigid beliefs from around 1932 onwards (e.g. his Saskia typeface of 1932, and his acceptance of classical Roman typefaces for body-type) as he moved back towards Classicism in print design. He later condemned Die neue Typographie as too extreme. He also went so far as to condemn Modernist design in general as being authoritarian and inherently fascistic.
Sabon Tschichold Iwan Stencil Iwan Reschniev Typefaces Tschichold designed include: Classical Garamond
Iwan Stencil
Sabon
Classical Garamond
MC
Matthew Carter (1937-present)
Life:
Matthew Carter CBE (born 1 October 1937) is a British type designer. A 2005 New Yorker profile described him as ‘the most widely read man in the world’ by considering the amount of text set in his commonly used fonts.
Career:
Carter’s career began in the early 1960s and has bridged all three major technologies used in type design: physical type, phototypesetting and digital font design, as well as the design of custom lettering. Carter’s most used fonts are the classic web fonts Verdana and Georgia and the Windows interface font Tahoma, as well as other designs including Bell Centennial, Miller and Galliard. He is the son of the English historian of printing Harry Carter (1901– 1982) and cofounded Bitstream, one of the first major retailers of digital fonts. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Specimens of typefaces by Matthew Carter
Typefaces:
Alisal
Gando
Sitka
Bell Centennial
Georgia*
Snell Roundhand
Big Caslon
Helvetica Compressed
Skia
Big Figgins
Helvetica Greek
Sophia
Big Moore
Mantinia
Stilson
Carter Sans
Meiryo (Latin range)
Tahoma
Cascade Script
Miller
Van Lanen
Charter
Monticello
Verdana
Cochin (adaptation)*
Nina
Vincent
Elephant (later republished
Olympian
Walker
as Big Figgins)*
Rocky
Wilson Greek
Fenway
Roster
Yale
ITC Galliard
Shelley Script
C o c hin
The Cochin family of fonts was based upon copper engravings from the 18th century, which partly explains why the Cochin typeface is wide in appearance. Copper is easy to work and engrave, being a soft metal, but to improve legibility it often has wider characters that might be seen in print. An engraved font needs to have sufficient spacing to allow the reader to be able to discern between upright strokes.
E l e phant
A contemporary interpretation of grotesque (historic) typestyle, relying on geometric shapes applied to a grid. Idiosyncrasies within the typeface are based on how this grid is constructed and applied rather than those inherent in drawing type with a pen or cutting from a block of wood. Other grot types retain the quirks of original woodcut typefaces. Elephant has a different vocabulary of quirks that remove it from being too reverential or constrained to a historic context.
Although inspired by the need for, and providing, clarity at low resolutions on the screen, Georgia is a typeface resonant with typographic personality. Even at small sizes the face exudes a sense of friendliness. This is as much testament to the skill of the typeface’s designer, Matthew Carter, as it is to any intrinsic quality of the face’s design, since the small pixel spaces of the screen can be a harrowing canvas for any type designer.
G e o r gia
MFB
Morris Fuller Benton (1872-1948) Life: Morris Fuller Benton (November 30, 1872 – June 30, 1948) was an American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders (ATF), for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937. Many of Benton’s designs, such as his large family of related sans-serif or “gothic” typefaces, including Alternate Gothic, Franklin Gothic, and News Gothic, are still in everyday use.
Career: Benton is credited as America’s most prolific designer of metal type, having (with his team) completed 221 typefaces, including revivals of historical models, like Bodoni and Cloister; original designs, such as Hobo, Bank Gothic, and Broadway; and adding new weights to existing faces, such as Century, Goudy Old Style and Cheltenham. Although he did not invent the concept, Benton working at ATF pioneered the concept of families of typeface designs, allowing consistency of appearance in different sizes, widths and weights. This allowed ATF to capitalise on a successful typeface’s popularity and facilitated coherent layout and graphic design; its 1923 specimen book described its approach of creating families which could allow advertisers to “talk at command with varying emphasis and orchestral power [rather than using] a medley of display types.” Benton worked as the team leader of designers responsible for creating a basic design and then adapting it to different sizes and weights. He considered his work as a designer important and wrote a brief list of typefaces he considered his most important work in 1936, shortly before his retirement. Benton was relatively retiring in life: a 1936 interview described him as “one of the most difficult men to interview I have ever talked to...try to pin some honour on him, or give him credit for some achievement, and he will modestly sidestep with the remark that ‘Lady Luck helped me a lot there!’”
Roycroft (c. 1898), inspired by lettering in the Saturday Evening Typefaces: Post and often credited to Lewis Buddy, though (according to ATF) designed “partly” by Benton. Century series, based on the original Century Roman cut by Linn Boyd Benton. Globe Gothic (c. 1900), a refinement of Taylor Gothic, designed by ATF vice-president Joseph W. Phinney in 1897 for Charles H. Taylor for the exclusive use of the Boston Globe. Card Mercantile (1901), a redesign of the two smallest sizes of an 1890s Dickinson Type Foundry design that ATF had acquired when the companies merged in 1896. Wedding Text (1901) Typo Script + extended (1902), originally ‘‘Tiffany Script’’. Engravers Bold (1902, also cast by Barnhart Brothers & Spindler) Franklin Gothic series, the patriarch of American sans-serif faces, named for Benjamin Franklin, America’s greatest printer. Alternate Gothic, Nos. 1,2,3 (1903) Cheltenham series, based on the original Cheltenham designed by Bertram Goodhue. and many others......
Cheltenham
Hobo
News Gothic
typeface in the grotesque or industrial style. It was designed by Morris Fuller Benton and released in 1908 by his employer American Type Founders (ATF). News Gothic is similar in proportion and structure to Franklin Gothic, also designed by Benton, but lighter. News Gothic, like other Benton sans serif typefaces, follows the grotesque model, resembling serif text faces of the period, with a double-storey lower-case a and g. Also distinctive are the blunt terminus at the apex of the lowercase t, and the location of the tail of the uppercase Q completely outside the bowl. The letter forms are compact, and descenders are shallow. The typeface differs from other grotesque sans-serifs in its rather light weight and open letterforms, contributing to a less severe, humanist tone of voice. For much of the twentieth century News Gothic was used in newspaper and magazine publishing with copies available on Monotype and Intertype machines for hot metal typesetting. Both companies added additional weights to the family. For use in headlines, it was designed with condensed and extra-condensed styles. ‘Gothic’ was an early twentieth century term for sans-serifs, found mostly in the United States and Canada. It was also used in the UK, along with ‘grotesque’. In Germany the term ‘Grotesk’ was used.
MM
Max Miedinger (1910-1980) Life:
Max Miedinger (24 December 1910 – 8 March 1980) was a Swiss typeface designer. He was famous for creating the Neue Haas Grotesk typeface in 1957 that was renamed Helvetica in 1960. Marketed as a symbol of cutting-edge Swiss technology, Helvetica achieved immediate global success. Between 1926 and 1930 Miedinger trained as a typesetter in Zurich, after which he attended evening classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zurich.
Career:
Miedinger returned to Zurich as a freelance graphic designer when Edouard Hoffmann, director of the Haas foundry, commissioned him in 1956 to design a new Grotesk typeface. It was officially presented, under the name Neue Haas Grotesk, on the occasion of Graphic 57, a major exhibition of the graphic industry that takes place at the Palais de Beaulieu, in Lausanne. Only the semi-bold series (size 20) was then presented. In 1960, supplemented by the lean, bold and italic series, the font was marketed under the name Helvetica. Publication of Neue Helvetica, based on old Helvetica, by Linotype in 1983. All rights ceded to Linotype in 1989.
Typefaces:
Helvetica (also known as Neue Haas Grotesk) Pro Arte, a condensed slab serif. Undigitised. Horizontal, a wide capitals design similar to Microgramma. Digitised as Miedinger. Helvetica Monospace Helvetica Inserat
Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk and other German and Swiss designs. Its use became a hallmark of the International Typographic Style that emerged from the work of Swiss designers in the 1950s and ‘60s, becoming one of the most popular typefaces of the 20th century. Over the years, a wide range of variants have been released in different weights, widths, and sizes, as well as matching designs for a range of non-Latin alphabets. Notable features of Helvetica as originally designed include a high x-height, the termination of strokes on horizontal or vertical lines and an unusually tight spacing between letters, which combine to give it a dense, solid appearance.
Helvetica
NJ
Nicolas Jenson
(1420 – 1480)
*1
Life:
Nicholas Jenson (c.1420 – 1480) was a French engraver, pioneer, printer and type designer who carried out most of his work in Venice, Italy. Jenson acted as Master of the French Royal Mint at Tours, and is credited with being the creator of one of the finest early Roman type faces. Nicholas Jenson has been something of an iconic figure among students of early printing since the nineteenth century when the aesthete William Morris praised the beauty and perfection of his roman font. Jenson is an important figure in the early history of printing and a pivotal force in the emergence of Venice as one of the first great centers of the printing press.
*2
Career:
During the time of his arrival in Venice Jenson was quite successful as an artist but was financially successful as well. His early training as a gold smith allowed him even greater sensitivities to the sculptural nature of type; the letters Jenson employed were often beautiful capitals that could summon the spirit of Rome. Jenson’s highly legible and evenly colored typeface, based upon Humanistic scripts, has been reinterpreted through the centuries by numerous type designers, most notably William Morris. Jenson’s fame as one of history’s greatest typeface designers and punch cutters rests on the types first used in Eusebius’s De praeparatione evangelica, which presents the full flowering of roman type design. Jenson’s letters are clearly borrowing their shapes from the calligraphic shapes that preceded them, called littera antica. These were in turn based on Carolingian minuscules, to which serifs, borrowed from the Imperial Roman capitals, were added. It was first in use in his 1470 edition of Eusebius. In 1471, a Greek typeface followed, which was used for quotations, and then in 1473 a Black Letter typeface, which he used in books on medicine and history. In distinction to his contemporary printers, Jenson was able to expand his financial base. By 1477 he could run as many as twelve presses simultaneously. He is also responsible for launching two book trading companies, first in 1475 and then in 1480, under the name of Johannes de Colonia, Nicolaus Jenson et socii. Following his death respective typefaces were employed by the Aldine Press, and have continued to be the basis for numerous fonts. Examples include William Morris’ Golden Type, Bruce Rogers’ “Centaur” in 1914, Morris Fuller Benton’s “Cloister Old Style” in 1926, and Robert Slimbach’s “Adobe Jenson” in 1996.
*3
*1 Capitals of Nicolas Jenson’s roman typeface, from a translation ‘in fiorentina’ of Pliny the Elder, 1476.
*2 Roman type of Nicholas Jenson, 1472.
*3 A specimen of Nicolas Jenson’s archetypal roman typeface, from the “Laertis”, 1475.
Typefaces: Adobe Jenson Adobe Jenson Italic Adobe Jenson Bold Adobe Jenson Caption
Jenson Classico Adobe Jenson Display
Adobe Jenson Subhead
PR
Paul Renner (1878-1956)
Paul Friedrich August Renner (9 August 1878 – 25 April 1956) was a German typeface designer. In 1927, he designed the Futura typeface, which became one of the most successful and most-used types of the 20th century. He was born in Wernigerode, and died in Hödingen. He had a strict Protestant upbringing, being educated in a 19th-century Gymnasium. He was brought up to have a very German sense of leadership, of duty and responsibility. He disliked abstract art and many forms of modern culture, such as jazz, cinema, and dancing. But equally, he admired the functionalist strain in modernism. Thus, Renner can be seen as a bridge between the traditional (19th century) and the modern (20th century). He attempted to fuse the Gothic and the roman typefaces. Renner was a prominent member of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation). Two of his major texts are Typografie als Kunst (Typography as Art) and Die Kunst der Typographie (The Art of Typography). He created a new set of guidelines for good book design and invented the popular Futura, a geometric sans-serif font used by many typographers throughout the 20th century and today. The typeface Architype Renner is based upon Renner’s early experimental exploration of geometric letterforms for the Futura typeface, most of which were deleted from the face’s character set before it was issued. Tasse, a 1994 typeface is a revival of Renner’s 1953 typeface Steile Futura. Renner was a friend of the eminent German typographer Jan Tschichold and a key participant in the heated ideological and artistic debates of that time.
Tpefaces: Architype Renner (1927) Futura (1927) Plak (1930) Futura Black (1929) Futura light (1932) Ballade (1938) Renner Antiqua (1939)
WC
William Caslon (1693-1766) Life:
William Caslon I (1693 – 23 January 1766), also known as William Caslon the Elder, was an English typefounder. The distinction and legibility of his type secured him the patronage of the leading printers of the day in England and on the continent. His typefaces transformed English type design and first established an English national typographic style.
Caslon typefaces were immediately popular and used for many important printed works, including the first printed version of the United States Declaration of Independence. Caslon’s types became so popular that the expression about typeface choice, “when in doubt, use Caslon” came about. The Caslon types fell out of favour in the century after his death, but were revived in the 1840s. Several revivals of the Caslon types are widely used today.
Caslon was born in Cradley, Worcestershire in 1693 and trained as an engraver in nearby Birmingham. In 1716, he started business in London as an engraver of gun locks and barrels and as a bookbinder’s tool cutter. Having contact with printers, he was induced to fit up a type foundry, largely through the encouragement of William Bowyer. He died on 23 January 1766, and was buried in the churchyard of St Luke Old Street, London, where the family tomb is preserved.
Career &Typeface:
Though his name would come to be identified with an enduring style of Latin alphabet, Caslon’s first typefaces were what contemporary typefounders called “exotics.” His first design was an Arabic made at the English size (14pt), commissioned by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge before 1725, followed by a Hebrew created for William Bowyer in 1726, and a Coptic for Wilkins first used in 1731. His first Latin typefaces were a roman and italic cut in the pica size (12pt), of a style that was fully realized by the publication of his foundry’s specimen sheet in 1734. Caslon’s typefaces were inspired by the Dutch Baroque types, the most commonly used types in England before Caslon’s faces.
A specimen sheet of typefaces and languages, by William Caslon I, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia.
Typefaces:
Old English
ITC Golden Cockerel
Caslon Antique
Done. Done by: Joud alhadid 0180715 References: https://www.wikipedia.org/ http://www.identifont.com/ https://www.fontshop.com/ https://www.fonts.com/ https://www.myfonts.com/