There’s more than enough serifs and san-serifs typefaces out there, so how about adding a few good Gothic fonts ( or Ye Olde English if you prefer ) to your typographic collection.

Clairvaux LT Std Roman.

Duc De Berry LT Std.

Fette Fraktur LT Std.

Goudy Text MT Std.

Linotext Std.

Notre Dame LT Std. Available in:

• Roman
• Ornaments

San Marco LT Std Roman.

Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch LT Std Roman.

Wittenberg Fraktur MT Std. Available in:

• Regular
• Bold

Dost thou like?

Don’t be afraid to add any favourites from your collection of Gothic fonts in a comment.

• Adobe Font Folio 11 preview (8)
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• The Periodic Table of Typefaces (0)

Gothic fonts for your inspiration

Quite some time ago I posted a brief look into some of the fonts included in Adobe Font Folio 11 collection. Too brief in fact. Included here is a wider sampling; including sans, serif, script and decorative fonts from the type library to whet your typographic whistle.

All typefaces included in the library come in OpenType format to suit whatever your system, 20 of which are showcased below. Some you’ll have seen, but with 2,300 typefaces included I’m sure plenty will be new.

Aachen Std Bold. Available in:

• Bold

Caflisch Script Pro. Available in:

• Light
• Regular
• Semibold
• Bold

Calcite Pro. Available in:

• Regular
• Bold
• Black

Celestia Antiqua Std. Available in:

• Regular
• Italic
• Semibold
• Bold

Emmascript MVB Std. Available in:

• Regular

Eurostyle LT Std. Available in:

• Medium; Regular, Oblique, Condensed and Extended
• Demi; Regular and Oblique
• Bold; Regular; Oblique, Condensed and Extended

Ex Pronto Pro. Available in:

• Light
• Regular
• Bold

ITC American Typewriter. Available in:

• Light; Regular and Condensed
• Medium; Regular and Condensed
• Bold; Regular and Condensed

ITC Cheltenham Std. Available in:
Light; Regular, Condensed, Italic and Condensed Italic
Book; Regular, Condensed, Italic and Condensed Italic
Bold; Regular, Condensed, Italic and Condensed Italic
Ultra; Regular, Condensed, Italic and Condensed Italic

Minister Std. Available in:

• Light; Regular and Italic
• Book; Regular and Italic
• Bold; Regular and Italic
• Black; Regular and Italic

Motter Corpus Std. Available in:

• Regular
• Condensed
• SemiCondensed

Revue Std. Available in:

• Bold

Script MT Std. Available in:

• Bold

Serpentine Std. Available in:

• Light; Regular and Oblique
• Medium; Regular and Oblique
• Bold; Regular and Oblique

Spumoni LP Std. Available in:

• Regular

Syntax LT Std. Available in:

• Roman
• Italic
• Bold
• Black
• Ultrablack

Trade Gothic LT Std. Available in more combinations of light, book, bold, ultra, condensed and italic than I care to type out.

Verve Std. Available in:

• Regular
• Bold
• Black

Weidemann Std. Available in:

• Book; Regular and Italic
• Medium; Regular and Italic
• Bold; Regular and Italic
• Black; Regular and Italic

Wilheml Klingspor Gotish LT Std. Available in:

• Roman

And plenty more…

The complete library contains over 2,300 typefaces. If the above have piqued your interest you might like to head over to Adobe and check out the complete suite.

• Sans typefaces for graphic designers (7)
• Serif typefaces for graphic designers (0)
• Breaking the language barrier – Neue Helvetica Arabic (0)
• Gothic fonts for your inspiration (3)

Adobe Font Folio 11 preview

Now, I don’t know exactly what Google bases it’s auto-complete suggestions on, but presumably it’s built around popular search terms. If this is the case, the graphic design community may be harbouring a dirty little secret.

When you’re all alone…

Do you use Comic Sans?

P.S. Here are some more favourites from Google:

• assume the chicken is a sphere.
• amish online dating.
• computers are about murdering you in a lake.
• what if grass hoppers had machine guns.
• who can keep his head in a chicken coop the longest.
• why do walruses go to tupperware parties.
• i killed the president of paraguay with a fork. how’ve you been.
• onions are my husband.
• penguins are my favourite sort of frogs.
• do you find it painful when i get funky.

It’s good to know people still find the time to ask how you’ve been after they’ve just killed the president of Paraguay with a fork.

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Using comic sans in secret: Disturbing revelations

Unless you’ve got it tattooed on your forehead, you don’t love it as much as this girl I wager. I just hope Helvetica looks as good in 30 years when her skin is a bit worse for wear.

Rinklevetica?

Hmm, a Futura-Heavy tattoo for me perhaps? Perhaps not…

• Sans typefaces for graphic designers (7)
• Breaking the language barrier – Neue Helvetica Arabic (0)
• Logo designs that lasted (0)
• The best and worst of clients (4)

You think you love Helvetica?

Nadine Chahine is a type designer and Arabic specialist for international type foundry Linotype GmbH. Nadine recently released her latest latin adaptation, Neue Helvetica Arabic.

The design is intended to be a companion to Helvetica Neue, and while the typeface was met much praise, there were an equal amount of unsure readers and a handful of slamming reviews.

Nadine describes the typeface as “a mono-linear design with very little contrast“, and yet Helvetica is neither of these.

Two key points of the design brief were;

• Design a typeface that would be the Arabic companion to Neue Helvetica.
• The Arabic version would be true to Arabic script aesthetics and be able to function on its own as well.

Admittedly I know nothing about Arabic typography, but when reading on, these objectives seem destined to conflict.

From a western perspective it seems people are expecting the same variation in stroke weights and shapes to be mirrored in Arabic type, however this is apparently not what is expected in the east.

Readers who are not familiar with Arabic are usually looking to see the same curves of Latin reproduced in the Arabic. This doesn’t work.

Every script has its own logic and we can’t used the curves of one to make the other… There are features that are may not be desirable to take into other scripts.

What do you think?

To quote Nadine in her article, “Is it possible to bring Swiss neutrality into the Middle East?” Is this Helvetica? or just another typeface.

Lots of interesting points can be found in Nadines original post here.

• You think you love Helvetica? (4)
• Sans typefaces for graphic designers (7)
• Why equal point sizes of type are not the same (2)
• 10 favourite logotypes (2)

Breaking the language barrier – Neue Helvetica Arabic

As we all know there are thousand and thousands of fonts out there, of the few hundred of good ones you can probably remember one or two dozen, and beyond that you’ll need some reference. This is the post for you.

Cam Wilde from Squidspot recently posted his latest work, The Periodic Table of Typefaces, as shown above. The table consists of 100 “popular, influential and notorious fonts” as collected by Cam from many reputable design blogs.

As well as offering prints, shirts, and this nifty Moleskin cover shown below ( I’ve ordered mine ) Cam is kindly offering the source file for whatever donation you deem appropriate, so that you can print your own or do with it whatever your heart desires.

What do you think?

For a while now I’ve been using a few legal size print outs with a hundred lines of the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog printed in a few dozen fonts and a couple of point sizes, my new Moleskin cover is going to be a stylish and handy little tool.

• Typographic treats (3)
• Sans typefaces for graphic designers (7)
• Serif typefaces for graphic designers (0)
• Gothic fonts for your inspiration (3)

The Periodic Table of Typefaces

If you’ve done any amount of graphic design or typography you’ve no doubt noticed that the apparent size of type varies greatly between fonts when used at the same point size. Some appearing almost double the size of their smaller counterparts.

The reason is that the point size refers to the body that the character occupies, and although type of equal point size may sit on the same body, they will not occupy the space in the same way.

I won’t go into them all, but various elements of the type effect it’s usable size. One of the biggest factors is the x-height, as pictured in this posts heading.

If you were to look at the above two typefaces, Verdana and Goudy Old Style, without the grid lines, it would appear that the Verdana is a larger point size. They are however both 50pt.

As you can seen from the grid lines, the x-height of Verdana is much higher then that of Goudy making the typeface appear larger. This, among other reasons, is why typefaces of equal point sizes appear so different.

Not that this information will help your typography at all, but a little extra knowledge never hurt anyone.

I hope this was interesting.

What other tidbits of information would you like to know?

• Any colour type, as long as it’s solid – CMYK vs Spot colour printing (0)
• The Periodic Table of Typefaces (0)
• Logo designs that lasted (0)
• Breaking the language barrier – Neue Helvetica Arabic (0)

Why equal point sizes of type are not the same

We all know some people love their typography, but wow. If it’s not enough for you to sit at your typographic chair and table you can always give yourself a good scrub with this soap.

Read on for more typographic accessories to satisfy your designer cravings.

Wooden table by Crate and Barrel.

A range of pillows by Bonjour Mon Coussin. There are 8 to choose from.

No more boring green canvas bags from the grocery store for you.

Prop your drinks up in style with these coasters

Not quite sure what you’d store in those centre diagonals but i still want a huge M to keep my socks in.

Relax in style with this chair.

If you have to lug around a huge handbag it might as well look good.

What takes your fancy?

I’ve got my eye on that wooden table, how about you?

• 10 top typographic portraits (0)
• Alphabet keyrings (0)
• The Periodic Table of Typefaces (0)
• The play more more more notepad – Turn scrap paper into sport (2)

Typographic treats

Burlesque Design have recently released these great little illustrated alphabet keychains, based on their previous poster featuring the same characters. A little typographic fun if you want to spice you keyring up.

Groovy!

Their online store was down at the time of posting so I’m not sure of the price, hopefully it will be back up soon.

• Using comic sans in secret: Disturbing revelations (3)
• Typographic treats (3)
• An anecdote for creative types everywhere (9)
• The illustrated works of Jo Martin (0)

Alphabet keyrings

Akzidenz-Grotesk

Akzidenz-Grotesk is a realist sans-serif typeface originally released by the H. Berthold AG type foundry in 1896 under the title Accidenz-Grotesk. It was the first sans serif typeface to be widely used and influenced many later neo-grotesque typefaces.

Max Miedinger at the Haas Foundry used it as a model for the typeface Neue Haas Grotesk released in 1957, and renamed Helvetica in 1960.

Miedinger sought to refine the typeface making it more even and unified. Two other releases from 1957, Adrian Frutiger’s Univers and Bauer and Baum’s Folio, take inspiration from Akzidenz-Grotesk. Read more about Akzidenz-Grotesk.

Avenir

Avenir is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988, and released by Linotype GmbH, now a subsidiary of Monotype Corporation.

The name Avenir is French for “future,” and takes inspiration from early geomeric sans-serif typefaces Erbar (1926) designed by Jakob Erbar, and Futura (1927) designed by Paul Renner.

Frutiger intended Avenir to be a more organic, humanist interpretation of these highly geometric types. While similarities can be seen with Futura, the two-story lowercase a is more like Erbar, and also recalls Frutiger’s earlier namesake typeface Frutiger.

Avenir was originally released in 1988 with three weights, each with a roman and oblique version, and used Frutiger’s two-digit weight and width convention for names: 45 (book); 46 (book oblique); 55 (text weight); 56 (text weight oblique); and, 75 (bold) and 76 (bold oblique).

The typeface family was later expanded to six weights, each with a roman and oblique version. Read more about Avenir.

Bell Gothic

Bell Gothic is a realist sans-serif typeface designed by Chauncey H. Griffith in 1938 while heading the typographic development program at the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. The typeface was commissioned by AT&T as a proprietary typeface for use in telephone directories (and should not be confused with the Bell typeface, designed for the British typefounder and publisher John Bell (1746-1831) by the punchcutter Richard Austin).

Bell Gothic was superseded by Matthew Carter’s typeface Bell Centennial in 1978, the one hundredth anniversary of AT&T’s founding. Read more about Bell Gothic.

DIN 1451

The DIN 1451 typeface is very legible and easy to reproduce. Both a medium and a narrow version are defined today; an older broad version is no longer used but may still be encountered on some very old road signs in Germany.

The typeface has gained popularity due to its wide exposure and has been also used by non-governmental organisations and businesses. For graphic design and desktop publishing, FontShop offers an extended version of this typeface called FF DIN.

It is a widely used standard typeface for traffic, administration and business applications. In particular, DIN 1451 is the typeface commonly used on road and railway signage in Germany and a number of other countries.

It was also used for many years on German car number plates, until it was replaced there in November 2000 by FE-Schrift, a font especially designed for number plates that is optimised for better tamper resistance and easier automatic character recognition. Read more about DIN.

Franklin Gothic

Franklin Gothic is a realist sans-serif typeface designed by Morris Fuller Benton (1872–1948) in 1902. The typeface is one of over 200 typefaces designed by Benton. There is an assumption that this typeface was named after Benjamin Franklin. “Gothic” is an increasingly archaic term meaning sans-serif, which is found primarily in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Franklin Gothic was originally designed as a typeface with a single weight and only two variations in width. Franklin Gothic has been used in many advertisements and headlines in newspapers. The typeface continues to maintain a high profile appearing in a variety of media from books to billboards.

At first only a Roman was released, but additional variants were added as Franklin Gothic became popular. A condensed design was drawn in 1905, and an extra condensed in 1906. Five years later Benton added an italic to the family, and two years after that a shaded font was offered.

In addition to Franklin Gothic, Morris Fuller Benton also designed the font in a condensed width with lighter weight, as News Gothic and Lightline Gothic. Extra condensed version became Alternate Gothic. Read more about Franklin Gothic.

Frutiger

Frutiger is a sans-serif typeface by the Swiss type designer Adrian Frutiger. It was commissioned in 1968 by the newly built Charles De Gaulle International Airport at Roissy, France, which needed a new directional sign system. Instead of using one of his previously designed typefaces like Univers, Frutiger chose to design a new one. The new typeface, originally called Roissy, was completed in 1975 and installed at the airport the same year.

Frutiger’s goal was to create a sans serif typeface with the rationality and cleanliness of Univers, but with the organic and proportional aspects of Gill Sans. The result is that Frutiger is a distinctive and legible typeface. The letter properties were suited to the needs of Charles De Gaulle – modern appearance and legibility at various angles, sizes, and distances. Ascenders and descenders are very prominent, and apertures are wide to easily distinguish letters from each other.

The Frutiger family was released publicly in 1976, by the Stempel type foundry in conjunction with Linotype. Frutiger’s simple and legible, yet warm and casual character has made it popular today in advertising and small print.

Some major uses of Frutiger are in the corporate identity of Raytheon, the National Health Service in England, Telefónica O2, the British Royal Navy, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Conservative Party of Canada, the Banco Bradesco in Brazil, the Finnish Defence Forces and on road signs in Switzerland.

The typeface has also been used across the public transport network in Oslo, Norway since the 1980s. In 2008 it was the fifth best-selling typeface of the Linotype foundry. Read more about Frutiger.

Futura

Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed between 1924 and 1926 by Paul Renner. It is based on geometric shapes that became representative visual elements of the Bauhaus design style of 1919–1933.Commissioned by the Bauer type foundry, Futura was commercially released in 1927.

The family was originally published in Light, Medium, Bold, and Bold Oblique fonts in 1928. Light Oblique, Medium Oblique, Demibold, and Demibold Oblique fonts were later released in 1930. Book font was released in 1932. Book Oblique font was released in 1939. Extra Bold font was designed by Edwin W. Shaar in 1952. Extra Bold Italic font was designed in 1955 by Edwin W. Shaar and Tommy Thompson.

Although Renner was not associated with the Bauhaus, he shared many of its idioms and believed that a modern typeface should express modern models, rather than be a revival of a previous design. Renner’s initial design included several geometrically constructed alternative characters and ranging (old-style) figures, which can be found in the typeface Architype Renner.

Futura has an appearance of efficiency and forwardness. The typeface is derived from simple geometric forms (near-perfect circles, triangles and squares) and is based on strokes of near-even weight, which are low in contrast. (This is most visible in the almost perfectly round stroke of the o, but the shape is actually slightly ovoid.)

In designing Futura, Renner avoided the decorative, eliminating non-essential elements. The lowercase has tall ascenders, which rise above the cap line. The uppercase characters present proportions similar to those of classical roman capitals. Read more about Futura.

Gill Sans

Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill.

The original design appeared in 1926 when Douglas Cleverdon opened his own bookshop in his home town of Bristol, where Eric Gill painted the fascia over the window in sans-serif capitals that would be later be known as Gill Sans. In addition, Gill had sketched a design for the publisher and bookseller Douglas Cleverdon, intended as a guide for Cleverdon to make future notices and announcements.

Gill further developed it into a complete font family after Stanley Morison commissioned the development Gill Sans to combat the families of Erbar, Futura and Kabel which were being launched in Germany during the latter 1920s. Gill Sans was later released in 1928 by Monotype Corporation.

Gill Sans became popular when in 1929 Cecil Dandridge commissioned Eric Gill to produce Gill Sans to be used on the London and North Eastern Railway for a unique typeface for all the LNER’s posters and publicity material. Read more about Gill Sans.

Helvetica

Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) of Münchenstein, Switzerland. Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market.

Originally called Die Neue Haas Grotesk, it was created based on Schelter-Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, had no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.

When Linotype adopted the Neue Haas Grotesk (which was never planned to be a full range of mechanical and hot-metal typefaces) its design was reworked. After the success of Univers, Arthur Ritzel of Stempel redesigned Neue Haas Grotesk into a larger family.

In 1960, the typeface’s name was changed by Haas’ German parent company Stempel to Helvetica (derived from Confoederatio Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland) in order to make it more marketable internationally. Read more about Helvetica.

Univers

Univers is one of a group of neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces, all released in 1957, that includes Folio and Neue Haas Grotesk (later renamed Helvetica). These three faces are sometimes confused with each other, because each is based on the 1896 typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk. These typefaces figure prominently in the Swiss Style of graphic design.

Different weights and variations within the type family are designated by the use of numbers rather than names, a system since adopted by Frutiger for other type designs. Frutiger envisioned a large family with multiple widths and weights that maintained a unified design idiom. However, the actual typeface names within Univers family include both number and letter suffixes.

Currently, Univers type family consists of 44 faces, with 16 uniquely numbered weight, width, position combinations. 20 fonts have oblique positions. 8 fonts support Central European character set. 8 support Cyrillic character set. Read more about Univers.

All images and descriptions are courtesy of Wikipedia.

What are your thoughts?

What are your go to fonts? If you have another font that you think should be on this list let me know.

• Serif typefaces for graphic designers (0)
• Gothic fonts for your inspiration (3)
• Using comic sans in secret: Disturbing revelations (3)
• Adobe Font Folio 11 preview (8)

Sans typefaces for graphic designers

To start, I thought I’d confuse you by opening 10 favourite logotypes with the logo design for eight. Seriously though, a logotype is a logo comprised of text only, with no graphic mark, generally either a custom font created for the project, or an existing typeface which has undergone a type treatment. Today I’ll share with you a couple of my favourites.

Families. Logo design for the readers digest publication, by Herb Lubalin.

Fender guitars.

You’ve never too old to like Disney.

Logo from Michael Evamy’s book Logo.

Sink It. Logotype for a golfing putting aid, I foresee my fathers next Christmas present…

Twins logotype, very clever.

Coca Cola. Can’t go past the classics.

Version 2.

The IBM logotype by graphic designer Paul Rand.

How about you?

Do we share any favourites? What other logotypes do you love?

• My favourite graphic, combination and logotype marks (0)
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10 favourite logotypes

If you’ve ever wondered why the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, it’s because it’s a pangram used to test typewriters and computer keyboards.

Pangrams are short, coherent lines of text containing all the letters of the English alphabet. Compare the above to typing abcdefg… and so on, you’ll find using the pangram much easier. I grabbed a few more from around the net in case you’re bored of hearing about the fox.

• The five boxing wizards jump quickly.
• Playing jazz vibe chords quickly excites my wife.
• Jinxed wizards pluck ivy from the big quilt.
• Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
• Jim just quit and packed extra bags for Liz Owen.
• Six crazy kings vowed to abolish my quite pitiful jousts.

Now it all makes sense.

Do you know any other interesting pangrams?

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• Take two tablets for creative inspiration. Imaginitol. (0)

Why does that fox keep jumping over the dog?

I recently began a job for a client to design a brochure for their patient care service, the project is small budget and to be printed in CMYK only. Everything was going fine then someone said it… brown text.

While extremely accurate, printers are not 100% perfect. Depending on the circumstances, there is the potential for a tiny amount of mis-registration between the 4 layers of ink.

Creating brown requires all 4 colours to be mixed, if you imagine the layers of cyan, magenta and yellow being slightly off centre from the black, they create coloured halos around the text as pictured above.

When printing headings or large text this isn’t a problem, but applying this to a body of 8pt type has the potential to create a bit of a mess.

When printing body copy a single colour is always best, black is obviously the standard choice for most applications in CMYK printing. If particularly small, coloured type is required you really should use a spot / Pantone colour.

A spot colour is single coloured ink applied to the paper in 1 pass. Obviously when ink is applied to the paper in a single pass there can be no misregistration. The result is crisp, clean edged type ( as pictured above ) with no halos or irregularities.

Much better!

A spot colour will add an additional cost to your design project, but if coloured body copy is required you can’t argue with the result.

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Any colour type, as long as it’s solid – CMYK vs Spot colour printing

Bembo

Bembo is the name given to an old style serif typeface based upon a face cut by Francesco Griffo, first printed in February 1496 (1495 more veneto).

Griffo worked in the Venetian press of the humanist printer Aldus Manutius. The face was first used in the setting of book entitled De Aetna, a short text about a journey to Mount Aetna written by Italian Cardinal Pietro Bembo.

The typeface would serve as a source of inspiration for typefaces of the Parisian publisher Claude Garamond, that are collectively called Garamond.

The typeface Bembo we see today is a revival designed by Stanley Morison for the Monotype Corporation in 1929. Read more about Bembo.

Bodoni

Bodoni is the name given to a series of serif typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) in 1798. The typeface is classified as didone modern.

Bodoni followed the ideas of John Baskerville, as found in the printing type Baskerville, that of increased stroke contrast and a more vertical, slightly condensed, upper case, but taking them to a more extreme conclusion.

Bodoni’s typeface has a narrower underlying structure with flat, unbracketed serifs. The face has extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, and an overall geometric construction. Read more about Bodoni.

Caslon

Caslon refers to a number of serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I (1692–1766), and various revivals thereof.

Caslon shares the irregularity characteristic of Dutch Baroque types. It is characterised by short ascenders and descenders, bracketed serifs, moderately-high contrast, robust texture, and moderate modulation of stroke.

The A has a concave hollow at the apex, the G is without a spur. Caslon’s italics have a rhythmic calligraphic stoke. Characters A, V, and W have an acute slant. The lowercase italic p, q, v, w, and z all have a suggestion of a swash. Read more about Caslon.

Clarendon

Clarendon is an English slab-serif typeface that was created in England by Robert Besley for the Fann Street Foundry in 1845. Besley went as far as trying to patent the typeface, and Clarendon is now known as the first registered typeface. However, the patents at the time lasted only three years; as soon as the typeface became popular, it was copied by other foundries.

The original matrices and punches remained at Stephenson Blake and later resided at the Type Museum, London. They were marketed by Stephenson Blake as Consort, though some additional weights (a bold and italics) were cut in the 1950s.

It was named after the Clarendon Press in Oxford. The typeface was reworked by the Monotype foundry in 1935. It was revised by Hermann Eidenbenz in 1953.

Courier

Courier is a monospaced slab serif typeface designed to resemble the output from a strike-on typewriter.

The typeface was designed by Howard “Bud” Kettler in 1955. The design of the original Courier typeface was commissioned in the 1950s by IBM for use in typewriters, but they did not secure legal exclusivity to the typeface and it soon became a standard font used throughout the typewriter industry.

As a monospaced font, it has recently found renewed use in the electronic world in situations where columns of characters must be consistently aligned. It has also become an industry standard for all screenplays to be written in 12 point Courier or a close variant. Read more about Courier.

Excelsior

Excelsior is a serif typeface, designed by Chauncey H. Griffith, and presented by Mergenthaler Linotype in 1931. It is one of five typefaces in Griffith’s ‘Legibility Group’ which contains typefaces especially well-suited to newsprint.

Before designing this font, Griffith consulted the results of a survey of optometrists regarding optimal legibility.

Opticon and Paragon were released in 1935 as slightly heavier and slightly lighter versions of Excelsior designed for newspapers that deliberately underink to favor halftones, or overink to favor text and headlines.

The News 702 typeface by BitStream is almost identical to Excelsior.

Garamond

Garamond is the name given to a group of old style serif typefaces named for the punch-cutter Claude Garamond (c. 1480-1561). A majority of the typefaces named Garamond are more closely related to the work of a later punch-cutter Jean Jannon.

A direct relationship between Garamond’s letterforms and contemporary type can be found in the Roman versions of the typefaces Sabon, Granjon, Stempel Garamond, and Adobe Garamond.

Garamond’s letterforms convey a sense of fluidity and consistency. Some unique characteristics in his letters are the small bowl of the a and the small eye of the e. Long extenders and top serifs have a downward slope.
Read more about Garamond.

Lucida

Lucida is an extended family of related typefaces designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes in 1985.

There are many variants called Lucida, including scripts (Blackletter, Calligraphy, Handwriting), serif (Fax, Bright), and sans-serif (Sans, Sans Unicode, Grande, Sans Typewriter).

Bigelow & Holmes, together with the (now defunct) TeX vendor Y&Y, extended the Lucida family with a full set of TeX mathematical symbols, making it one of the few typefaces that provide full-featured text and mathematical typesetting within TeX. Read more about Lucida.

Minion

Minion is the name of a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in 1990 for Adobe Systems. The name comes from the traditional naming system for type sizes, in which minion is between nonpareil and brevier. It is inspired by late Renaissance-era type.

A unique feature is the support of Regular and Display optical sizes in Regular and Italic fonts. Different optical sizes have different stroke contrasts and details, designed to optimise texts for specific applications. Minion Black does not have italic counterpart. Read more about Minion.

Perpetua

Perpetua is a typeface that was designed by British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker Eric Gill (1882–1940).

Though not designed in the historical period of transitional type (the hallmark of transitional type was John Baskerville’s type designed in the last half of the 18th century), Perpetua can be classified with transitional typefaces because of characteristics such as high stroke contrast and bracketed serifs. Along with these characteristics, Perpetua bears the distinct personality of Eric Gill’s letterforms.

Gill began work on Perpetua in 1925 at the request of Stanley Morison, typographical advisor to Monotype. Morison sought Gill’s talent to design a new typeface for the foundry. By 1929, Perpetua Roman was issued as Monotype Series 239.

Gill designed two companion faces for Perpetua. The first was a typeface called Felicity. That design was met with mixed reactions. A second italic, called Perpetua Italic, was drawn by Gill and subsequently issued by Monotype along with Perpetua Roman.

Sabon

Sabon is the name of an old style serif typeface designed by the German born typographer and designer Jan Tschichold (1902–1974) in the period 1964–1967. The typeface was released jointly by the Linotype, Monotype, and Stempel type foundries in 1967.

Design of the roman is based on types by Claude Garamond (c.1480–1561), particularly a specimen printed by the Frankfurt printer Konrad Berner. Berner had married the widow of a fellow printer Jacques Sabon, the source of the face’s name. The italics are based on types designed by a contemporary of Garamond’s, Robert Grandjon. The typeface is frequently described as a Garamond revival.

An early first use of Sabon was the setting of the Washburn College Bible in 1973 by the American graphic designer Bradbury Thompson. All books of the King James biblical text were set by hand in a process called thought-unit typography, where Thompson broke the lines at their spoken syntactical breaks.

Trajan

Trajan is an old style serif typeface designed in 1989 by Carol Twombly for Adobe. The design is based on the letterforms of capitalis monumentalis or Roman square capitals, as used for the inscription at the base of Trajan’s Column from which the typeface takes its name.

Since lower case forms were not in use in Roman times, Trajan is an all-capitals typeface. Instead, small caps are commonly used, and a more complete set of glyphs contained in Trajan Pro (a 2001 update of the original typeface) includes a lower case of small caps.

All images and descriptions are courtesy of Wikipedia.

What are your thoughts?

What are your go to fonts? If you have another font that you think should be on this list let me know.

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Serif typefaces for graphic designers

While I really don’t get a lot of art, everyone once in a while I find something I can really appreciate. Posted here is a small collection of excellent typography portraits starting with Actor Mos Def.

Singer Rihanna, this is one of a series of typographic portraits use to promote the 51st Grammy Awards.

James Brown, feeling good!

Barrack Obama. An interview with Sol Sender, the logo designer behind the Obama 08 campaign mark can be found here if your interested.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

And finally…

This, is where they send people who use Papyrus and Comic-Sans… You’ve been warned.

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10 top typographic portraits