Tag Archives: font classifications

Bodoni: Modern typestyle, a revolutionary cold fish

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Revolutionary styles (to locate them by time) Modern: Bodoni Book These are type styles of the late 1700s and early 1800s, although their influence remains. To call them Modern, as most of the schools do, is silly. They are 200 years old. To call them Romantic (as Bringhurst does) is equally strange for they are cold fish. They are the natural expression of the radical, revolutionary intellectualism of the period. They are built with hard, tightly structured … Continue reading →

French Old Style: ITC Galliard

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As mentioned, Granjon was another of the new breed of professional punchcutters who developed type foundries in Paris in the early sixteenth century. I find Matthew Carter’s interpretation to be the best of the Garalde styles, but Hoefler makes it another classification (probably just to give himself an excuse to show this exquisite design in addition to the required Garamond). French Oldstyle characteristics Heavier Serifs becomes much stronger: more like supports than finishing strokes to a stem … Continue reading →

Geralde: Garamond, the classic serif font

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Garalde: Garamond 3 This group is named in homage to Claude Garamond and Aldus Manutius. These original serif fonts are exemplified by the work of Claude Garamond in Paris in the early to mid-1500s. Robert Slimbach released a new interpretation of Claude Garamond’s and Robert Granjon’s styles called Adobe Garamond Pro—now ramped up to Premier after redoing the OpenType version. Garamond was the first major type designer. He was not a printer or calligrapher, he was a freelance punchcutter. Along with … Continue reading →

Font classifications: the lowest common denominators

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A practical list The four basic classifications of all type are: Of course, most of the so-called Decorative fonts are serif or sans. As you can see above, Abiquiu Fiesta is basically a sans serif. Miscellaneous would be a better term. We’ll start with the majority: serif typefaces. Way more than half of all font designs were serif fonts. This overwhelming majority has been diluted a bit by the outpouring of fancy and widely varied scripts in recent … Continue reading →

A Practical Approach To Classifying Fonts

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My goal in this little series is not to give you an academic dissertation, but a practical guide to fonts you can use on a day to day basis—or not. One of the more entertaining resources on the Web was Jonathan Hoefler’s Typography 101 writings on typophile.com. Regrettably, I can’t find it there this morning. Like Bringhurst, his classes make a lot of sense and we’ll include them in our practical list as we go through. He … Continue reading →