Monday 8 October 2012

5 Historic typefaces, possibilities continued.

Typography (from the Greek roots τύπος typos = "impression" and -γραφία -graphia = "writing").



Claude Garamond (16th Century) 1523, created the Garamond typeface, which was the first font to have the characteristic blocky look we associate with text today, rather than all previous typefaces that looked like handwriting.

John Baskerville (c. 1772) created roman and italic types. Considered transitional and partly retrogressive with a return to lower contrast, smooth transaxial modeling, finely modeled bracketed serifs, and long stems. The exquisite design and finish of Baskerville's roman however, combining elegance and strength, was modern. His roman design, and especially his italic, were rococo-influenced. 

1780 CE, Bodoni is 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.

1784 CE, Didot Typeface Designed

1814 CE Steam powered press. invented


1886 CE Linotype Machine is invented. Linotype machine (play /ˈlaɪnətaɪp/), it became the world's leading manufacturer of book and newspaper typesetting equipment; outside North America, its only serious challenger for book production was the United States-/England-based Monotype Corporation. Ottmar Mergenthaler (May 11, 1854 – October 28, 1899) was an inventor who has been called a second Gutenberg because of his invention of the Linotype machine, the first device that could easily and quickly set complete lines of type for use in printing presses.

1896 Cheltenham is an old style serif typeface, designed in 1896 by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue and Ingalls Kimball for use by a New York publisher, the Cheltenham Press.

1898 Akzidenz Grotesk Designed is a grotesque (early sans-serif) typeface originally released by the H. Berthold AG type foundry in 1898 under the name Accidenz-Grotesk. It was the first sans serif typeface to be widely used and influenced many later neo-grotesque typefaces.

1901 Copperplate Gothic is a typeface designed by Frederic W. Goudy and released by the American Type Founders (ATF) in 1901. While termed a "Gothic" (a metonym for sans-serif), the face has small glyphic serifs that act to emphasize the blunt terminus of vertical and horizontal strokes. The typeface shows an unusual combination of influences: the glyphs are reminiscent of stone carving, the wide horizontal axis is typical of Victorian display types, yet the result is far cleaner and leaves a crisp impression in letterpress or offset printing.

1904 Franklin Gothic its related faces, are realist sans-serif typefaces originated by Morris Fuller Benton (1872–1948) in 
1902. “Gothic” is an increasingly archaic term meaning sans-serif. Franklin Gothic has been used in many advertisements and headlines in newspapers.

1908 New Gothic designed

1914 Souvenir Typeface was originally drawn by Morris Fuller Benton in 1914 as a single weight for the American Type Founders company. Souvenir’s large x-height and open counters make its characters highly legible. Its distinctive characters help the design stand out from the crowd, while the soft edges and round corners allow Souvenir to be used in a wide variety of print surfaces and imaging environments.

1923 Neuland Typeface is a German typeface that was designed in 1923 by Rudolf Koch. Koch designed it by directly carving the type into metal.

1932 Times New Roman, is a serif typeface commissioned by the British newspaper The Times in 1931, created by Victor Lardent at the English branch of Monotype. It was commissioned after Stanley Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically antiquated. The font was supervised by Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times.

1953 Mistral Designed. Designed by Roger Excoffon. Mistral was based directly on Excoffon's own handwriting, a loose-running script with a great deal of panache.

1957 Haas Grotesque (Helvetica) Designed. 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 the successful Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, its design was based on Schelter-Grotesk and Haas’ Normal Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.

1962 Eurostile Typeface is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Aldo Novarese in
1962. Novarese originally made Eurostile for one of the best-known Italian foundries, Nebiolo, in Turin. Novarese developed Eurostile because although the similar Microgramma, which he had also designed, came with a variety of weights, it had only upper-case letters. A decade after he had designed Microgramma, Novarese remedied this flaw with his design of Eurostile, which added lower-case letters, a bold condensed variant, and an ultra narrow design he called Eurostile Compact, for a total of seven fonts.

Gotham is a family of geometric sans-serif typefaces designed by American type designer Tobias Frere-Jones & Jesse Ragan in 2000. Gotham's letterforms are inspired by a form of architectural signage that achieved popularity in the mid-twentieth century, and are especially popular throughout New York City.

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