Tag Archives: serif

New release! Librum Book Design Group font package

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This is the release of the fifteen-font package for book design which I developed in the writing of Practical Font Design With FontLab 5. It is a further development of the Contenu/Buddy group. Click here to purchase the Librum Book Design Group The x-heights are larger, it’s slightly narrower, and the general design is a bit more conservative. There is a serif text family, named Librum, for body copy, and a companion serif ebook family, named Librum … Continue reading →

It’s very good seed! A graphic & font family package

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This is another package I’ve put up on Creative Market. An excellent image of good seed sprouting in good soil… A four-font serif family named Artimas. A good start to a card design This stuff is just useful and at a very good price. The retail cost is well over $100. This package is: Only $29

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Choosing a companion sans for your body copy

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Use a companion font for the heads & subheads This font family needs to be carefully chosen. It needs to have enough contrast to the body copy font to make the heads stand out. But it must have the same, or a very similar, x-height. This way you can use it comfortably for things like run-in heads, where the first few words in a paragraph are used as a contrasting low-level subhead. Your family choice should probably … 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 →

Venetian: the beginning of our fonts, Nicholas Jenson

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Venetian: Adobe Jenson Pro Shortly after Gutenberg got things rolling in Germany a group of printers in Italy became interested in reviving some of the letterforms instituted by Charlemagne at the founding of the Holy Roman Empire in the 8th century. The creative innovation was provided by Nicholas Jenson in Venice who combined the inscriptional caps with the Carolingian miniscules without many of the cursive remains. The gorgeous result is what we now call caps and lowercase, … Continue reading →

Some glyph or character shape terminology in font design

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Some glyph terminology First we better define glyph. To be honest, I’ve never gotten this straight. To me it is just another term for a character or letter. Technically, it is typespeak for variations of a character. An A, an A with a swash, A small cap A might be considered three glyphs of the letter A. In my font design books, a glyph has a separate design window for a character in a font. Before we … 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 →

Font families, font widths, italics, and obliques

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Font families Over the years, font design has developed groups of fonts that are obviously variants of the same basic font. They are called font families. These families can have differences in weight and width. Commonly, they have also have italic variants; but that is really a special case, as we will see in a bit. Font weight Weight is the thickness of the stroke. Here are the common weights arranged in order from thin to thick: … Continue reading →

Readability: the most important aspect of typography?

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If you ever took one of my classes, you know how much I harped on readability—especially the importance of aperture and other page layout factors concerning readability. Aside from the kindness issue (blessing your readers), this is governed by the realities of modern living. Everyone has too much to read. If you give them any excuse, they will quit reading your work and go on to the next piece in their long list of things they have … Continue reading →