Sumner Stone

By: Tiffany Vedua

Typographer, Sumner Stone, was born in Venice, Florida in 1945. By getting his start in calligraphy, he eventually gained an interest for designing type. To date, he has developed over 180 typefaces. Many of these are titled to connect in some way to his name, Stone.

Stone Type Foundry Inc. is currently based in Rumsey, California. He runs his establishment on his own, for his style is— for the most part—traditional and simple.

All typeface production and website maintenance are done by himself.

Before launching the Stone Type Foundry in 1990, Sumner Stone had undergone training in calligraphy, mathematics, farming, graphic design, and teaching.

He earned a BA in Sociology while studying at Reed, but also earned an MA in Mathematics when attending Sonoma

State University. He had gone on to work as a lettering artist for Hallmark Cards, but ran his personal design studio. While at Hallmark, he was introduced to the work of Hermann Zapf—his most prominent inspiration. Hallmark also still remains a client of Stone’s. Other clients include Stanford University, Full Belly Farm, General Motors, and Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He became the first Director of Typography at Adobe Systems in 1984.

In his five years there, he developed the typographic program that made Adobe a leader in designing type. He collaborated with Japan’s Morisawa, where he collaborated to produce international fonts.

Today, he continues to teach type design at various universities, such as San Francicso State and University of California. Primarily though, Stone enjoys his role as an instructor at Type@Cooper in Cooper Union. He holds typography seminars and lectures called Structure & Emotion in Letterform. His talks delve into the emotional connotations of certain fonts, and explain typeface appropriation.

Though acknowledging the associations of type design is a significant factor in the practicality of a layout, the structure must receive equal attention. Students that attend these presentations learn to pay

attention to the tiny distinctive qualities of letterforms in order to effectively portray a message. Writing books is another way that Stone is able to share his knowledge on typography. His most recognized book, On Stone: The Art and Use of Typography on the Personal Computer, recalls the origins of type design in history, then segues into examples of analysis and commentary.

In 1987, Stone ITC became his most significant font superfamily; it includes Stone Sans, Serif, and Informal. At Adobe, he teamed up with Bob Ishi to develop it (Ishi is Japanese for “Stone,” so it was only fitting to name the typeface in honor of both men). Stone and Ishi strived to configure a hybrid 20th century font that could be rendered with and without serifs. The three different subdivisions of Stone ITC have the same basic foundation: same cap height, widths, etc. The family of the Bodoni font is also one of his more commonly used typefaces. In 2001, Stone experimented to establish Basalt—originally his new version of an improved elementary handwriting,

but eventually came to be referred to as a “Roman Sans serif.” He explains that this is the sans serif face that corresponds to the already established formal serif faces associated with the Romans. He began utilizing this font in signage at Stanford University libraries. Magma II is another recent font that Stone has created. With the success of the ITC Stone family, he wanted to improve the letterforms to be more appealing, yet still legible. Hermann’s Zapf ’s Optima and Syntax by Hans Eduard Meier were the muses in his process. When he begins to design a font, he sketches the shapes of the characters using a pencil on frosted mylar. He scans the sheet and digitizes it to allow for more refined manipulation. He says that his most tedious and time-consuming stage of the process is determining the exact proportions of strokes.

He is enamored with text having a purpose in its placement. Public lettering, such as those on directional signs or informative plaques, are in his interest. His favorite example is the dependency on signage at the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California; here, one’s life solely relies on navigation using the signs available.

His practical style and aesthetic are evident in his simplistic, sophisticated designs. His projects typically are precise and geometric, and rarely contain unusual angles or contrast. He treats each letter as its own structure with its own personality. The forms all exude an emotion because of definitive features.