When designing a typeface, I prefer to explore a construction principle rather than revive an existing typeface idea. These principles or writing models are based on the tools and techniques originally used. Understanding these workings are often a great source of inspiration for me.

The starting point for my latest typeface Ode was the Textualis, one of the various broken script writing models. It has a strong modular build suggesting that it’s easily constructed. Albrecht Dürer further reduced it in his Underweysung der Messung, mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt, in Linien, Ebenen unnd gantzen corporen.

Albrecht Dürer’s visualisation of the contemporary broken-script construction (Nuremberg, 1525).

This brings us to the first disadvantage of this model regarding its legibility. Because of its simple construction and repetitive pattern, the letters lack individuality, thereby making it more difficult for the reader to tell them apart. Similarly problematic of the Textura model are certain archaic letter forms which are unfamiliar to us because today we predominantly read texts that use the humanist model or its derived forms.

Another readability issue of many classic interpretations of the Textura model is the high contrast between the foreground (letters) and the background (paper or screen). Imagine, for example, a whole page set in a bold typeface.

Left: Typical example of a printed publication from the 1920s in Germany (German translation of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels). Right: The same text set in Ode.

All in all, it’s a writing model which seems unsuitable as a basis for a good text typeface design, which explains why it’s rarely used today for that purpose. So, this triggered an interesting question for me: can one design a good text typeface based on a writing model that doesn’t really lend itself as one?

Another issue that I am especially aware of (being German born), is the association of broken script typography with the Third Reich.* The rigid formal construction has become synonymous with severity — even brutality — its negative associations are now used (in attempts) to express nonconformity.

Tannenberg, a commonly used broken-script during the Third Reich. Even today it’s indelibly tied to this period as the headline in this example shows. (found on http://www.sostars.com).

Taking liberties

Considering these above-mentioned ‘shortcomings,’ I needed more leeway for the conception of Ode — a less orthodox approach to the model.

An early sketch; on the bottom are writing examples of the humanist model (left), textualis (right) with between them, a mixture of both.

I loosened up the stern construction of the straight segments and hard corners to give the design a smoother, organic and overall friendlier appearance. Specifically, I rounded off the corners of the outer shapes and curved them while keeping the fractures within the counters intact. To make the whole design more lively and give it more tension, I slightly slanted all letters to the right and shifted the weight within the characters subtly upward, away from the base-line.

A few steps from the Textura model to Ode

1: Round off corners of the outer shapes;
2: Bend straight connections;
3: Gentle slant, concentration of the weight upward, away from baseline.

Weight issue

Initially I focused on the design of the heaviest weight. But since I had wanted a text typeface, I also needed to draw lighter weights without losing the visual connection to the boldest variant. This was an interesting task since the construction of the Textura model relies on a minimum stoke width without which the elements of some characters would disconnect. So the next liberty I took was to adjust the construction of the lighter weight, introducing a bow that would — as for example with the letter n — connect otherwise disconnected stems. Even though this type of construction is closer to the humanist model (derived from the gothic Textura), it still is compatible: both models are based on writing with the broad-nibbed pen.

1: The two shapes in the heaviest weight overlap;
2: Reduced weight, shapes disconnect;
3: Straight becomes a bridging curve.

Unfamiliar forms

Next on my list was dealing with characters like k, x, z and ß, or X and Z. Letters that — if drawn in their archaic form — are simply unfamiliar to most modern eyes. We are often only able to guess the character from its context. Again a more humanist construction was my ideal solution for this problem. The same adjustment to the construction was applied to letters D, M, N, P, U, V, W, and Y so that, while still recognizable, they would not stand out too much for my taste.

Left: FF Brokenscript; right: Ode.

To dissociate the typeface further from the typical idea of a Blackletter, I intentionally did not give Ode a long s (ſ), ligatures like ch, or any letter form reminiscent of the classic model. In designing Ode I wanted to give the Textura a fresh start.

Ode has two defining influences: the gothic Textura (right, FF Brokenscript by Just van Rossum) and the Humanist model (left).

Broken Script figures

By working with a derived model for the letters, I had greater flexibility to extend the typeface’s possible form elements. These I could now re-apply as I designed the figures, allowing, in my eyes, a perfect harmony with the rest of the character set.

In Linotype’s Fette Fraktur™ (first line) — one of today’s more popular blackletters — the figures are neoclassical and are drawn without fractures. Apart from the contrast, the style of the figures does not integrate so easily into the whole. Ode’s flexible design principles permits figures to harmoniously match the rest of the character set.

This is Ode

Had I gone for the Textura as is, the result would have surely been much closer to the classical model. Instead I allowed myself to be influenced by other models and thus discovered my own rules. Maybe I would even have managed to do what I had in mind initially: designing a Textura-related typeface without a severe or archaic look. In my mind this interpretation is a friendly one, a more open design, one that doesn’t require you to decipher text — but just to read it.

Serving suggestion

Looking at Ode makes me think of food — something that I actually do quite a lot. No Nouvelle Cuisine here but rustic fare, dishes served in bowls and plates with a thick rim, lots of herbs and a wooden board with freshly sliced bread. All that accompanied by a simple vino tavola, a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo maybe. Enjoy your meal!

* The Nazis actually rejected the broken script model faces and, in 1941, declared the antiqua types to be the “Normal” or standard type henceforth (Source: Das Bundesarchiv, Signatur NS 6/334, Einführung der Antiqua-Schrift als Normalschrift. - R -, 3. January 1941).

Ode is available at Martin Wenzel’s foundry and Hannes Famira’s foundry.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

Ode, a Fresh Start for a Broken Script

We see it every day on signs, billboards, packaging, in books and magazines; in fact, you are looking at it now — the Latin or Roman alphabet, the world’s most prolific, most widespread abc. Typography is a relatively recent invention, but to unearth the origins of alphabets, we will need to travel much farther back in time, to an era contemporaneous with the emergence of (agricultural) civilisation itself.

Robert Bringhurst wrote that writing is the solid form of language, the precipitate.[1] But writing is also much more than that, and its origins, its evolution, and the way it is now woven into the fabric of civilisations makes it a truly wonderful story. That story spans some 5,000 years. We’ll travel vast distances, meet an emperor, a clever Yorkshireman, a Phoenician princess by the name of Jezebel, and the ‘purple people’; we’ll march across deserts and fertile plains, and sail across oceans. We will begin where civilisation began, meander through the Middle Ages, race through the Renaissance, and in doing so discover where our alphabet originated, how and why it evolved, and why, for example, an A looks, well, like an A.

SUMER

Cuneiform

The Sumerians began to experiment with writing at the close of the fourth millennium BC, in Mesopotamia between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates (roughly modern-day Iraq). Like most writing systems, Cuneiform, initially scratched — later impressed by a stylus — into soft clay, started out as a series of pictograms — pictures representing words. The word for bird, for example, existed at first as a simple pictorial representation of a bird. The figure below demonstrates this process of abstraction or rationalization. In time, the pictures of things came to represent, not only things but, sounds. It is clear that a written language with signs that represent sounds requires fewer characters than a language in which a sign stands for a thing or an idea. We use 26 letters (and the Romans used only 23 to create some of the most outstanding literature the world has ever known) while the Chinese, for example, have to learn thousands of characters to express themselves. Even early cuneiform comprised some 1,500 pictograms. A language in which a picture or grapheme represents a thing or an idea has its advantages: people may speak any language while the written form stays the same. So a Chinese from the Southern provinces can speak a totally different dialect than his compatriot in Beijing, who would not understand him when he speaks, but can read what he writes.

1.1 The pictographic origin of Cuneiform.

Figure 1.2 is an example of Proto-Cuneiform, one of the earliest examples of writing know to us. It’s a form of Cuneiform that exists between the earliest purely pictographic forms and the later more abstract forms. Moreover, as there was no fixed or standard writing direction, the signs were often rotated to conform to the direction of writing employed — a bird is still a bird through 360 degrees of rotation.

1.2 Proto-Cuneiform. Subject: beer rations.

While the Sumerian language ceased to be spoken after about 2000 BC, the influence of its written form (Cuneiform) is still felt today. The Sumerian language was mostly replaced by the language of their Akkadian conquerors who did, however, adopt the Cuneiform signs of the Sumerians. This form of writing was used until the 5th century AD. Figure 1.3, shows the Cyrus Cylinder, recounts the fall of Babylon in 539 BC (Daniel 5 in the Old Testament) to the Persians led by king Cyrus.

1.3 Cyrus Cylinder (Akkadian cuneiform), 6th century BC. On display: Room 55, British Museum.
© Trustees of the British Museum

EGYPT

The writing of the gods

The Egyptians developed a similar system of pictograms, one many of us are familiar with. Hieroglyphic inscriptions (literally sacred carving), like Cuneiform started out as pictograms, but later those same pictures were also used to represent speech sounds. Looking at the different forms of Egyptian hieroglyphs we can better understand how those pictures of things representing words became more and more abstract. While you might be familiar with the form of Egyptian hieroglyphs carved into stone (lapidary inscriptions), they do, however, come in several forms or styles — all influenced by the medium upon which they are written, the purpose for which they are written, and their intended audience.

2.1 Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The Egyptian pictographs evolved into a cursive style called hieratic that was freer, written more rapidly and contained numerous ligatures.

2.2 Hieratic script, 12th Dynasty.

A yet later form is demotic, which represents the most abstract form of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Although written mostly in ink on papyrus, the most famous example is to be found on the granite Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone (196 BC), found by scholars who had travelled to Egypt with Napoleon in 1799, is important because it was the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is written in two languages, and three scripts: two forms of Egyptian (hieroglyphic & demotic), with a Greek translation.

2.3 Demotic script, 3rd century BC.

The story of the alphabet continues in Egypt during the second millennium BC, but the Egyptians are not its authors.

THE FIRST ALPHABETS

Wadi el-Hol

Until the discovery of two inscriptions (graffiti) in Wadi el-Hol, Egypt, in 1999, it was generally held that the beginnings of alphabetic scripts could be traced to around 1600 to 1500 BC, to the Phoenicians, a people of traders who lived on the coast of today’s Lebanon and Israel. However, the 1999 discovery reveals that, rather than the early Semitic alphabet being developed in their homeland of Syria-Palestine, it was instead developed by the Semitic-speaking people then living in Egypt. This strengthens the hypothesis there must have been ties between Egyptian scripts and their influence on those early Semitic or proto-Sinaitic alphabets. Moreover, it pushes back the origin of the alphabet to between 1900 and 1800 BC.

In the photograph of Inscription 1 from Wadi el-Hol below, the sign highlighted in red (hover over to see) is of an Ox head (ʼaleph) — the origins of the Latin A, and a letter with a long history — early Sumerian cuneiform also uses the Ox as a sign.

3.1 Inscription 1 from Wadi el-Hol. Written right to left. Hover over the image to see outlines and highlights.

By about 1600 BC in the region between the two dominant writing systems of the time, Cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, we see the emergence of other more systematised alphabets like ugaritic script (14th century BC) that developed in what is today Syria. The ugaritic script employs 30 simplified cuneiform signs. And thus begins the story of the alphabet.

3.2 Abecedary from Ugarit.

PROTO SINAITIC

At the same time as the short-lived ugaritic script was being developed (an alphabet adapted from Cuneiform), another alphabetic system emerged that was influenced by Egyptian hieroglyphs. This proto-Sinaitic alphabet of consonants was pictographic, yet each pictograph represents a sound rather than a thing or idea. It is this proto-Sinaitic alphabet that really marks the starting point, the root of numerous modern-day alphabets, from Arabic and Hebrew to Greek and Latin.

4.1 Proto Sinaitic script, c. 1500 BC.

Note the difference between the signs of Inscription 1 from Wadi el-Hol (figure 3.1), and those of the proto-Sinaitic script (figure 4.1). The latter are just a little more abstract. Note especially A (aleph), which has a simplified ductus (fewer strokes). Note too the simplified stick figure, representing a person at prayer. Cut off the torso and the head, rotate what’s left, and you will see in it the origins of the Latin E:

4.2 The evolution of E (see also figure 4.1 above).

But how and why did this alphabet of pictographs evolve into a series of abstract symbols? Mark-Alain Ouaknin, in Mysteries of the Alphabet suggests that the answer is to be found in the transition from polytheism to monotheism:

The second of the Ten Commandments states: ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in the heavens above or that is in the earth beneath…’ This prohibition on the image forced the Semites, who still wrote their language in a pictographic writing, to rid themselves of images.

I’m not convinced. Both Sumerian Cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs evolved from pictographs into more abstract signs. Both civilisations remained polytheistic throughout those transitions. Therefore, Monotheism and the prohibition on graven images cannot, I think, be responsible for the evolution of the proto-Sinaitic pictographic alphabet into proto-Hebraic and proto-Phoenician (or proto-Canaanite). Perhaps, in fact, the reverse is true: that the use of abstract letters may have induced the idea of an abstract God who forbade graven images — but permitted their representation as abstract signs.

THE PHOENICIANS

The Purple People

Jezebel, of Old Testament infamy (1 Kings) was a Phoenician princess.

While the invention of writing itself could never have progressed without a highly structured and even authoritarian state to back it up, the coming of the modern alphabet is a completely different story. Written in Cuneiform we have the wonderful adventures of Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu, but most of the clay-tablets from the agricultural city-states are more mundane: lists, taxation, and commercial transactions.

6.1 Phoenician inscription, late 11th century BC.

The Phoenician alphabet was probably developed for quick and easy to read notes that a merchant would make on his trips along the ports of the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians are now best-known for their terrible god Baal, to whom children were sacrificed in an enormous cast iron stove. But this story is a 19th century invention, as is the sensual image of the Phoenicians in Flaubert’s Salammbô. The Phoenicians were traders who created a loose empire of city-states along the coasts they visited: Africa, Spain and Sicily. Carthage is probably the best known of these Phoenician colonies. They owed their initial rise to a simple snail that can still be found on the coast of Lebanon and that, left rotting in the sun, could be used to make purple dye — thus the Greek-coined Phoenician or purple people, from phoiniki, meaning purple or crimson.

To this day, not all alphabets have letters to represent vowels. Hebrew and Arabic are the best known examples.

This simple and ingenious modern alphabet of consonants from which the last vestiges of pictograms had been erased, is indeed a merchant’s instrument: easy to learn, to write and to adapt. And adapted it was by cultures that we are generally much more familiar with: the Greek and Roman societies that form the base of modern Western civilisation and the lesser-known Tuscans.

6.2 Phoenician alphabet

First, Moloch, horrid King besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears;
Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud
Their children’s cries unheard that passed through fire
To his grim idol. — from Milton’s Paradise Lost.

GREEK

Enter the vowel

Although the earliest extant Greek inscriptions date back to the 8th century BC — the first Olympic games were held in 776 BC — many scholars think that the Greeks adopted the West Semitic Script (the Phoenician consonant alphabet) three centuries earlier. (note: Naveh, Millard, McCarter, and Cross concur. See Naveh, pp. 185-6). For a long time (at least until the widespread adoption of Ionian script in the fourth century BC), the Greek scripts followed no fixed direction, being written left to right, right to left, and in horizontal boustrophedon. (Braille is set boustrophedonically.)

7.1 Greek Papyrus of Artemisia, 3rd century BC. See Thompson, p. 119.

In Greek scripts we witness the jettisoning of pictographic forms in favour of abstract, linear forms. Based on comparisons of late Phoenician alphabets and archaic Greek scripts (and Greek tradition; e.g. Herodotus) it appears that the Greeks simply adopted most of the Phoenician signs but added the vowels that the Phoenicians had left out.

7.2 Greek inscription from Thera, 8th century BC.

ETRUSCAN

The Etruscans came to Italy from western Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). From about 750 BC, the Greeks, as far north as Naples, were settling in Italy. Finley writes about their passionate addiction to everything Greek — except for the Greek’s gloomy take on the afterlife and its dreadful underworld. They were among the first imitators of Greek vases which they often decorated with phoney Greek inscriptions.

One of the last known speakers of the Etruscan language was the learned emperor Claudius who wrote a dictionary now lost. To this day no-one has deciphered the Etruscan language, yet in classical times it was known for its great literature, unfortunately none of which has survived.

Not only did the Etruscans adopt much of the art and religious rites of the Greeks, but, most importantly for our story, they adopted the Greek alphabet. Rome may not have been an Etruscan town but the Roman kings were Etruscans. After the disastrous attack on the oldest Greek colony Cumae (beautifully situated on a high hill on the coast, ten miles north of Naples) in 524 BC, and Rome’s subsequent expulsion of the Etruscan king, Tarquinius Superbus their civilisation slowly waned. Within a few centuries the Roman Republic became the master of Italy and absorbed the Etruscans completely.

8.1 Abecedary from Marsiliana, Etruria, ca. 700 BC.

However, their alphabet survived and prospered as it spread over the world with the expansion of the world’s mistress, the mighty Roman Empire.

LATIN

Musical chairs & the tale of Z

The Latin alphabet that we still use today was created by the Etruscans and the Romans from the Greek. It had only 23 letters: the J, U and W were missing. The J was represented by the I, the U was written as V and there was no need for a W. The story of the Z is particularly interesting.

The new letter G (based on C) was added; Z was borrowed from the Greek, then dropped as Latin had no need for it. G took its place in the line-up, until a little later when the Romans decided they needed the Z (when Greek literature became the vogue and they started to introduce many Greek words), they re-introduced it, but since its spot had be taken by G, it was sent to the back of the alphabet, where it remains to this day.

9.1 Detail from Trajan inscription, ca. 114 AD.

RUSTIC CAPITALS

From the square Roman capitals (preserved on the plinth of Trajan’s Column (114 AD), developed the freer-form and slightly more condensed Rustic capitals.

10.1 Rustic Capitals, ca. 4th century.

Uncial & Half Uncial

The ‘lowercase’ makes its entrance

Most writing was of course done on papyrus and on walls, informal and quick. The cursive was the letter that Martialis read aloud to his friends when he recited his poems at night. This was a letterform that could be jotted down quickly with a reed pen dipped in ink. The ‘old’ cursive is difficult to read but the ‘new’, that evolved from the 4th century onwards resembles our own writing. It spawned the much later Carolingian minuscule letter — the Adam & Eve of all printing types used today. The second great invention, the codex, came at the same time. While the Romans used scrolls made of papyrus, in the fourth century somebody had the idea to cut parchment into oblong pieces and sew them together — thus creating the first random-accessible book. Together with the eminently readable script this must be considered one of the greatest inventions of all time.

11.1 Uncial, France, 7th century.

11.2 Left: Insular, England, 8th century. Right: Visigothic, Spain, France, 9th century.

In France, Merovingian; Visigothic in the Iberian peninsula (figure 11.2); the Beneventan (figure 11.3) in Southern Italy (which shows features of the Half-Uncial, and late Roman Cursive; and in England and Ireland, the Insular forms (figure 11.2).

11.3 Beneventan script, ca. 1100.

Carolingian to Gothic

An Emperor and a Yorkshireman

The anonymous author of Carmen de carolo Magno refers to Charlemagne as ‘the venerable head of Europe’ and ‘the father of Europe.’ Though that’s something of an exaggeration, Charlemagne’s influence was substantial and long-lasting, and he succeeded in uniting most of Western Europe for the first time since the Roman Empire. A man obsessed with bringing order to his expanding kingdom, he sought reform in just about every sphere. For our story his most important reform concerns his efforts to reform writing. Though efforts were already under way, he gave the job to a Yorkshireman, Alcuin of York. Alcuin strove for clarity and uniformity. These efforts, with the backing of Charlemagne and the Church, brought about the Carolingian minuscule (or Carolingian script).

A beautiful, legible book hand; long ascenders and descenders, letting in light between the lines, open and round letters with few ligatures and variant letterforms. The early Carolingian scripts share some features with the Roman Half-Uncial (the club shape ‘head serifs’ on the ascenders of b, d, h, and l, by the 11th century these were replaced by triangular serifs, similar to those we see in numerous roman typefaces of the incunabula (latter half of the 15th century). The early, rounder a was dropped in favour of one similar to that found in early Roman Uncials. In manuscripts penned in this hand, it is not uncommon to see the r with a descender.

With Charlemagne and the Church behind it, the Carolingian script quickly spread across Europe, deposing a multitude of regional scripts on its way. By the second half of the tenth century, Carolingian script had reached England, replacing late forms of the Insular script; in Spain it replaced Visigothic.

That the open forms of the Carolingian script were replaced, from the 12th century, by the darker, more condensed, angular, ligature-ridden, closed forms of the Gothic scripts is, as Delorez writes, one of the mysteries of history.

The causes of the transformation of Carolingian script into Pregothic, or the ‘Gothicizing’ of Carolingian script, have been debated for a long time and the discussion has virtually come to an end without any one explanation gaining general acceptance. — Derolez, p.68

Perhaps a partial explanation is to be found in the new Gothic aesthetic that was sweeping Europe.

12.1 Left: Late Carolingian script, between 1033 & 1053. Centre: Pregothic script, mid-twelfth century. Right: Gothic script (Textualis Formata), between 1304 & 1321.

Of course it was the Gothic script in the form of the formal book hand, Textualis (more precisely, Textualis Formata) that would later become the model for the typeface used to set Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible (ca. 1455).

12.2 Left: Tironian et in this detail from a 14th century manuscript, written in Textualis Formata. The first example in the first line: Arbres et fleurs et ce que orne. Right: Detail from Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible, ca. 1455. Note the tironian et on the last line.

From the beginning of the 12th century the tironian ‘et’ (still used in Irish to this day) began to replace the et ligature, or ampersand. It wouldn’t make a come back until the later Humanist scripts, models for the first roman typefaces.

Roman

Enter typography

The typographical medium could hardly hold more of the Italian Renaissance, the intense admiration for the classical precedent in the capitals, the humanists’ love of clarity and grace in the small letters. — Harry Carter, p.71 (on Jenson’s roman type).

Printing and 15th century humanism are closely related, and since the humanist philosophers and philologists (literally ‘lovers of words’, meaning they loved classical Latin) reintroduced classical Latin as the lingua franca of their class, it is no wonder that the first roman alphabets of the earliest printers only used the 23 letters of the classical era. The J was added later. The first J in print was probably made in Italy, early in the 16th century; the written form was first used in the Middle Ages, in France and the Netherlands. The W is a letter not known to the Latins but used often in the vernacular languages of the west. Well into the 17th century it was set in type as VV, but you will also find two Vs that have been cut down and joined to form a W.

13.1 Left: Early roman of Sweynheim & Pannartz, Rome, 1469. Right: Jenson, Venice, 1472.

We stand in the 17th century, some 5,000 years after the Sumerians set stylus to clay. We now have a dual alphabet of 26 letters, uppercase and lowercase forms. There is hardly a straight line to be seen in the history of the alphabet. No Darwinian progress there, no survival of the fittest. Many of the aforementioned scripts developed side-by-side, some disappeared and reappeared, some can be shown to be the product of the mind of one man like Alcuin of York. And we do not know what would have happened if Hannibal had marched straight to Rome after winning the battle of Cannae instead of loitering.

Putting the pieces together

Writing and alphabets evolve for a number of reasons. We can explain the transition from pictograms to the linear, more abstract forms in terms of rationalization. Moreover, regional and national variations develop, their success, in part at least, owed to political and geo-political factors: A victorious invader brings its culture, including its language, both spoken and written. Context is also an important factor: text cut in stone contemplating the deeds of emperors is something different than an advertisement for a brothel scratched on a wall in Pompeii. The substrate, or writing material (whether clay, stone, wax tablets, wood, metal, papyrus, parchment, or vellum; and the writing implement, a reed, chisel, quill, broad nib pen — they all affect the form the alphabet takes. The speed of the hand is another factor. As an interesting exercise, write the capital alphabet,

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

slowly and deliberately — in your best hand. Now write it again at twice the speed. Finally, write it as quickly as you possibly can. The rapid hand introduces a reduced ductus (fewer strokes), and fewer pen-lifts, with those neat capital letters of the first round turning into something freer, more cursive. You can then further evolve your letterforms by using the most rapidly written alphabet, and begin to rationalise it, adjusting the proportions, altering the shading (contrast), and the result is an entirely a new hand.

14.1. A brief history of A.

I have focused on writing systems that contributed to the later development of the Latin alphabet, but of course the story of the written word is broader and more profound. I have not mentioned writing systems that developed independently (e.g. Chinese and Japanese), and other scripts that do owe a debt to the proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician alphabets, like Hebrew and Arabic. The evolution of writing cannot be fully appreciated (comprehended, even) in isolation. Its stories are woven deep into the fabric of histories and civilisations, its paths steered by politics, religion, economics, and by innumerable other factors. So, the next time you set pen to paper, or tap keys on your keyboard, take a moment to reflect on the origins of these simple signs, signs that furnish us with incredible power — the power to describe all things.

Credits
Collage illustration by Able Parris.
Desktop wallpaper versions of Able’s Ox illustration.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dr. Paul Dijstelberge for his innumerable corrections, suggestions, enthusiasm, good humour, and learning.
Recommended reading
If you don’t have time to read everything in the bibliography, then a fine & entertaining introduction to this topic is Marc-Alain Ouaknin’s Mysteries of the Alphabet, 1999. But remember this was published a few months before the discoveries in Wadi el-Hol.

Footnotes
The Solid Form of Language — Robert Bringhurst, p. 9 [return]

Select bibliography
Early History of the Alphabet. An introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography — Joseph Naveh
Handbook of Greek and Latin Paleography — Edward Maunde Thompson
The Solid Form of Language — Robert Bringhurst
The Book through 5000 years — H.D.L. Vervliet
A View of Early Typography up to About 1600 — Harry Carter
The History & Power of Writing — Henri-Jean Martin
The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books — Albert Derolez
The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe — Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
A Short History of the Printed Word — Chappell & Bringhurst
Mysteries of the Alphabet: The Origins of Writing — Marc-Alain Ouaknin
The Illuminated Manuscript — Janet Backhouse
Medieval Calligraphy: Its History and Technique — Marc Drogin
From Gutenberg to OpenType — Robin Dodd
Aspects of Antiquity — M.I. Finley
The Romans — R.H. Barrow
The Birth of Europe — Jacques Le Goff
Shapes for Sounds — Timothy Donaldson

Sponsored by H&FJ.

The origins of abc

Part 1: the snare of authenticity

How much should a revival of a typeface look like the original? Well, just as with performing an old song—an analogy Matthew Carter has made—there is something you have to like in the original in order want to revive it. And you can’t depart from the original too much, or you lose the charm of the old song that appealed to you in the first place. But if it is too much like the old versions, it might be stale and dated, irrelevant. So what do you keep and what do you change? And change in what way? That’s the challenge every revivalist faces.

In the process of working on my own revival of Caslon—Williams Caslon—I came to two conclusions about revivals generally. First, the pursuit of authenticity is a snare and a trap. Don’t go there. Second, particularly if it’s an old typeface, it’s going to be harder than you imagined, and you can lose your way in the process. So you’d better start with a very clear goal for your revival, and stick to it.

Here’s the experience that led me to those conclusions.

It all started with an argument with the usual suspects at Typophile.com over the merits of Caslon—or lack of them. At one point type designer John Hudson wrote, “Sadly, Adobe Caslon is the only version that is suited to a wide range of typographic application, but it doesn’t look like Caslon, so what’s the point?”

At this point, a little bell went off in my head. I remembered reading Einstein’s ‘Autobiographical Notes’ back in my student days, and of course had to ID the typeface—fortunately, on “i love typography” I don’t have to explain why! The typeface was Mergenthaler Linotype Caslon Old Face, 12 point. And it always stuck in my head as having a distinct charm and readability that I never found quite matched in another typeface.

With a warning that visual impression at size in print and on screen are very different, here’s a bit of the Einstein autobiography:

So when Hudson wrote about how Adobe Caslon didn’t quite do it, I thought: maybe I can capture what I so liked in that Caslon.

So I started drawing, and meanwhile started researching Caslon. Along the way, I got the facsimile of the big 1766 specimen book of Caslon—originally published just before William Caslon the 1st died—edited with notes by James Mosley. I also got to talk with Mosley, and got hold of a number of other specimens.

The first thing I learned, which was a little startling, was that there is no such thing as a typeface called “Caslon.” Caslon was, in fact, the person to produce a full range of roman and italic faces at all sizes. But he was working in the 18th century, and had no concept that different sizes had to match in design. —That idea only became established in the late 19th century. Furthermore, he was a kind of revivalist himself, taking as his models faces from different Dutch and English punch cutters.

So his different sizes have quite different designs. For example, here is his Pica 2 (12 point):

And here is a large size that Caslon did, the caps about 42 pt:

The serifs on these large characters are pretty heavily bracketed, and rather pointed, while the Pica 2 has very little bracketing, and blunt ends. The H is narrow here and wide in the Pica 2, and the C has two spurs, whereas the Pica 2 has one, and on and on. Essentially these are two different typefaces, by modern standards. And indeed, ATF’s Caslon 540 is a beautifully conceived revival of some of the larger size Caslon designs. And Matthew Carter’s Big Caslon is an elegant interpretation of the very largest, highest contrast sizes. However, my interest was in the high readability and charm of the text size. And here it gets even more complicated, to the point where the name “Caslon” becomes almost more of a Rorschach test than the name of a clearly identifiable design.

The letters on the left are blown up from the type in the 1766 Caslon specimen book. The letters on the right are from the Mergenthaler Linotype Caslon Old Face specimen book of 1928. Both are of the Pica size, and probably the Lino is based on the original Pica 2.

There are several differences of interest here. First the arches in mnh are all different. Which is “Caslon”? One way to get around this problem is to try to copy each one exactly, to be “authentic.” More about this strategy shortly. A second obvious difference is that the ink spread is much heavier in the 18th century printing than the early 20th century. This is further complicated by the fact that even in the 20th century, with letterpress, rough or smooth paper makes a big difference. Here from the 1928 specimen book is an illustration of the difference. The same text with the same typeface printed on rough and smooth paper:

So which is “authentic”? Is it rough or smooth paper? Or should the original metal foundry type be seen as “authentic” and the digital form imitate that?

The late Justin Howes decided to do an “authentic” digital revival, and his strategy was to find old foundry type and print a wide range of sizes anew, then scan the printed letters, and digitize the outlines. The result is very impressive, particularly at large sizes, but it is not “authentic”. This we can see in the following illustration.

Here we can see the comparison between Justin Howes’ 12 point ITC Founders Caslon, in the center, with the original printed in the 18th century (left), and the early 20th century version, on rough paper (right). The point is that the digital version that tried so hard to be authentic in the ’90s is accurate to neither the original printing of Caslon—with coarse-grained ink on dampened paper—nor to the “hot metal” letterpress of Linotype. It clearly shows that it is a product of the 1990s.

However, this is not the only issue where authenticity is not achieved. If you look above, you see that Howes used the same damaged “h” for his model that Linotype used! But it is not authentic. In the original, shown above (left), the left stem leans forward, but is not bent under at the bottom, nor does it have a mangled left serif. Furthermore, there is a big problem with the italic. As James Mosley first noticed, some characters in the italic were recut sometime in the latter half of the 19th century. And in fact, at least in the 12 point size, they were completely recut, changing the slope angles. The Caslon company said this was all original and authentic in its 1924 specimen book, but they were not telling the truth. Thus the Howes’ “authentic” Caslon is partly a copy of a 19th century recutting.

Do these variations from the original or the hot metal printed versions matter at all? Well, I think the answer is, “Yes.” The reason for this is that weight and contrast of the ‘normal’ or ‘regular’ weight of a font at text sizes is a key factor affecting both the readability and the aesthetics of a font. The magical powers that Caslon was ascribed in the last part of the 19th century and first part of the 20th century applied to the kind of weight and contrast in the right example: letter press with relatively fine grained ink, on rough paper.

The ink spread or “gain” is actually a key factor here, because it operated in letter press as a kind of automatic “optical correction” for smaller sizes. As you can see above, what happens in letterpress is that ink spread added what in digital terms is a “stroke” around the letter. It is in effect a uniform addition to the thickness of all the stokes. But the stokes are not uniform in thickness. Adding a few thousandths of an inch to a fine stoke may double or triple its thickness, and while making only a slight percentage difference in a thick stem.

The graphic is from an illustration for Christian Schwartz’s Houston, a newspaper face. So that ink gain is for a modern high speed newspaper web press. The old letter press ink gain is more, and more irregular, as you go back in history.

The story goes on—though I won’t—as far as the irregularities that would have been involved in old printing. But the most important point is that the irregularity that was involved in Caslon’s work today looks distressed, antique, or antiquarian. If that is what you want, then ITC Founders Caslon is fabulous at larger sizes, and a bit too light but still fascinating to the eye at smaller ones. But the reality is that just doesn’t look good today as a font for regular use in books and magazines.

To go back to the analogy of the performance of an old song or old music score, the situation reminds me of what Ira Gershwin said when he heard Ella Fitzgerald’s recording of the Gershwin song book. “I never knew we were so good until I heard Ella sing our songs.” There is an “authentic” version, by the way, with George and Ira’s sister singing with George at the piano. I’d be interested in hearing it, but for listening pleasure, I’m sure it doesn’t hold a candle to Ella Fitzgerald.

Having labored in the Caslon vineyard for some years, I have great sympathy for Justin Howe (who died tragically young) and admiration for his monumental effort. But I think his effort proves that the goal of authenticity is misguided. What is most desirable today is not “authentic” but “classic.” And in order for a classic to look classic today it needs to be changed.

The need for changes is particularly true for Caslon, which has over the centuries been controversial, with many publishers, authors and readers adoring it, and type designers and connoisseurs slamming it.

The reality is that Caslon was himself a revivalist, and in his rush to create his huge output—a cornucopia of glyphs for non-latin scripts and a full range of latin sizes—and get it out to the world there was a lot of sloppiness by modern standards. In fact, he was sloppy even by comparison with some continental type founders working at the same time. And yet, there is a magic in some of Caslon’s sizes, and interesting work in all of them. There is no doubt that he had a rare gift.

Here is my late Uncle Ben Lieberman, in his Types of Typefaces (1967) summing up views of Caslon:

“[Caslon] is perhaps the most controversial face in history. Some persons consider it the greatest type ever (they have popularized a motto, ‘When in doubt, use Caslon’) and others think it overrated, a collection of mistakes, elusively out of keeping with everything. But—it works, is highly readable, alive, with warmth and open dignity that has no pretense whatsoever. Caslon is the prime example of a typeface in which the individual letters are nothing, but the total effect is strong and honest—the reverse of an all-star performance in which each letter has such perfection that it competes to be noticed.”

Lieberman was writing on the cusp of the change to photo type, which in twenty years was to be replaced yet again by digital type. And the magical “total effect” that he wrote about didn’t, in my view, survive the transition. My effort to recover that total effect in text is what I’ll write about in part II.

William Berkson is a writer and type designer. Information about his new book, to be published in October, is here, and his new revival of Caslon can be found here.

Coming soon on ILT: The Origins of ABC.
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Reviving Caslon

A biome in nature is essentially an ecosystem. It’s also the name for my new typeface family. The 14-weight Biome™ Wide family is now available on fonts.com. Now that the design is complete, I’m able to look back on the process.

The drawings that led to Biome (previously known as Nebulon) were completed in 2006, but I discovered, when I uncovered the drawings recently, that I had been thinking for a long time about various unconnected concepts that eventually worked their way into the same typeface. I was surprised to realize how many different ingredients went into this design. Obviously, other type designs were considerations throughout the process, but things besides typefaces tended to make their way into the stew of ideas that eventually got synthesized into the new typeface.

In 2002, I had been sketching a very rectangular, vaguely calligraphic sans design. Notes on the pages referred to something square, futuristic and mechanical. But like most of my type designs, some organic elements couldn’t help but creep in. I continued to consider this idea. Digital trials showed something square, blocky and with sharp, angular cuts at joins.

Starting around 1990, I was interested in midcentury modern design, particularly furniture and architecture. I found I liked certain traits that were prevalent: minimalism and biomorphism. In contrast, I was just as strongly repelled by the barren and overly rational elements of the period. I still think that modern architecture and design could stand to be more human and biomorphic, even if it remains minimal. “Organic modernism” was a subset of the design movement that, at least in concept, I could appreciate. It crept into my drawings for houses, furniture, and eventually letterforms.

For a number of years, I’ve tried to imagine letterforms with outside contours that follow the shape of a grotesque but with inside contours that follow the shape of something more open and humanistic. What would result? Eventually, I found a formal entry point for an experiment: subtract the inside counter form from the outside shape. But rather than overlap existing typefaces, I wanted to start from scratch with solid shapes. Initial tests were intriguing, though the limited characters weren’t enough to be conclusive.

In March of 2006, I sketched and digitized a keyword in Light and Bold, Wide and Narrow. In outline form, the figure/ground issues weren’t as evident, while curves and shapes were emphasized. I remember feeling like I was on to something.

Proofs, in clean black and white, showed other aspects. One result that I liked were letter shapes that seemed “spooky.” Pointy terminals at the bottom of h, m, and n gave the letters a kind of haunted, ethereal quality, like eyes of a skull. An intriguing, unexpected effect.

Certain letters clearly could not endure the “subtraction” process without becoming mangled, oversimplified or just awkward. Angled or straight letters like V, K, R and H resisted this subtraction. I experimented with making the shapes more round and soft, rather than square with round corners. The soft extreme was so loose and waggly that the counter shapes became active and chaotic. The pointed vertical terminals on h, m, n, u kept the design too unsettled. And as the wide master was the primary one I was working on, I realized that feature fought with the horizontal flow of the design. Losing that intriguing element improved cohesion, so I cut them. I started to see a midcentury modern flavor in some of the shapes, I think due to the width. Since the ellipse wouldn’t apply to angular letters, what kind of theme could harmonize with them? K and k were attempts to graft a Danish Modern shape aesthetic onto the original theme. All those organic furniture shapes bubbled to the surface.

A more faceted, hard version seemed like a solution until proofs appeared, clearly showing a very dated, tiki, retro feel. Much too limited in use, and now evoking a woodcut rather than an abstract, super ellipse. Animated yet homely, not futuristic. Biome already referred to the Eurostile® design in its squarish shapes and wide stance, and with Eurostile’s dated feel, Biome couldn’t keep this additional jauntiness. But something of the tension and vitality of the faceted version was interesting, something the earlier sans also had. Between the soft and hard extremes I found an ideal shape. It was something organic and soft, yet compressed and taut – a lively super ellipse.

These shapes were not easy to represent smoothly in the PostScript format. The proportions and shapes in each master were delicate and fussy to digitize, and they didn’t interpolate particularly well. Intermediate weights had curves that tended to look dead and overly squared. Since the lively yet taut quality was what differentiated Biome, I added intermediate masters in the center of the design space to control the shapes throughout the range. At this development stage, the width range of the masters was much more extreme than the final fonts.

I made a survey of the existing square or futuristic sans designs to see if the traits or feel of Biome overlapped with other designs. There were quite a few futuristic sans designs, some very prominent, like the Eurostile, Handel, and Neuropol™ designs, and others less exposed, like the Quagmire™, Cocon™, Korataki™, Galaxie™ and Rogue Sans™ typefaces. Many of these exhibit traits I wanted to avoid in Biome. Most are based on hard geometry or modular, grid-based schemes, or in the case of Eurostile, a conventional grotesque structure. Many modular and futuristic typefaces are spaced too tightly for use at small sizes, and I wanted Biome to feel calm, humane, open and sleek.

I typically sketch letter shapes over and over, throughout the process of development, so that while the outlines are evolving in digital format, I’m testing shapes on paper at the same time. Because of the number of iterations the basic shapes underwent, it was fortunate that I had constrained myself to keywords throughout the process. Pencil and paper were always handy, and for me, there’s still no better way to test out ideas than to draw them. Not every sketch ends up digitized, and not every digitized shape ends up in the final design. It pays to resolve all the important design decisions of a typeface before finishing the character set, especially with a large weight range.

Once the keyword was settled with Biome, it was time for some editing. It was visible to me in the keyword that so many disparate concepts had been crammed together. I had to abandon shapes that adhered to those concepts when they didn’t harmonize with the rest of the alphabet. The counters of a, s, g became less simplistic. The corners of a, h, m, n and u became more balanced and quiet, and the correct radii for inner and outer corners of A, K, V, W, etc. were settled. Diagonals were made very slightly curved. Many of the alternates I had tested were discarded. At this point, I finally considered that Biome could be finished and released, rather than remain a frustrating experiment.

Clearly a display design, the round corners and soft shapes lent themselves not only to “futuristic” applications but also to more sporty, slick and masculine ones. The less of the retro feel it had, the more versatile it became. Some of the default shapes of Biome resulted in a moderately unconventional and “futuristic” appearance. I thought that by substituting in a few glyphs, the effect could be made either more conventional, or more futuristic and abstract. I tested many alternate shapes but kept relatively few of them, since they had to blend with the rest. I settled on a conventional set and an abstract set, which would be accessible as OpenType® features.

Because I had kept a very large x-height throughout development, I discovered when I thought about small caps, that they could be the same height as the lowercase. On developing the small caps, I realized that some of the lowercase shapes could double as small caps, as in c, o, s, v, z. Having this versatility of shapes, and the various alternates, gave me the idea for a unicase set that would use a mix of cap and lowercase shapes. I eventually decided that this set would have absolutely no extenders, giving rise to the unconventional small cap q. This feature included its own set of figures, also matching the x-height.

Biome went from an unwieldy, conceptual experiment to a cohesive type design. The creation process was similar to developing a complex recipe that had to simmer over time, while ingredients married, in order to arrive at its own flavor. I have called Biome a retro-futuristic, soft display sans. It is a hybrid of humanistic and mechanistic. The design’s biomorphic traits are amplified at larger sizes, and its mechanistic traits are more evident at small sizes. Biome is also spaced for a wide range of sizes, though I think it performs better in display. The design retains a retro flavor, a paradox with “futuristic” designs. “Futurism” of any age always shows its origins eventually. Biome comes pre-aged.

Carl Crossgrove is a type designer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He started lettering and calligraphy studies at around the same time he learned to read. He is now employed by Monotype Imaging, designing typefaces for custom clients and the company’s retail libraries. His retail type designs include the Beorcana™, Mundo Sans™, Reliq™ and Origami™ typefaces.

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Biome — the making of a typeface

I have published this article as a page. You can read it here.
Right now I’m unable to get the JavaScript working within a WordPress post. Once fixed, the page will redirect to a proper WordPress post. In the meantime, if you’d like to comment, then you can do so below, through Twitter, or via email at johno@ilovetypography.com

Read An Introduction to OpenType Substitution Features.

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An Introduction to OpenType Substitution Features

The impetus for Founders Grotesk originally came from Duncan Forbes of The International Office. We had often discussed the nature and usefulness of the classic grotesks, and the possibility of creating a new one. After trawling through my 1912 Miller & Richard specimen, he became enamoured with their series of Grotesques, particularly the No.7 all-caps showing.

Grotesque No.7, Miller & Richard, 1912

He noted the appealing rudimentary geometry, the serpentine S, and the narrow but welcome aperture of the C and G. Even though I was aware of these styles, I hadn’t considered their possibility for contemporary interpretation. As Duncan is an excellent graphic designer, he saw potential in the Grotesques. I have learned that graphic designers see typefaces differently to type designers—it is wise to take note when their interest is piqued.

The top row is original scale, the bottom is rescaled to common size. Doric No.4, H.W. Caslon, 1919

One of the decisions revivalists face is which size of metal type to base their design. Before digital type each point size was cut specifically, creating necessary variations in letter shapes, spacing and proportions. Even if a letterform is exactly the same shape throughout every size, ink squeeze and paper stocks would ensure distortion. The example above demonstrates the variety of a single letterform found in the H.W. Caslon Doric No.4 series.

Corps 14 compared to Corps 40. Breite Grotesk, Bauerschen Giesserei, 1851

The revival decision can be further exacerbated by groupings of seemingly unrelated fonts under a single name, like the above Breite Grotesks from the Bauerschen Giesserei foundry.

Left: Grotesque No.3, Miller & Richard, 1912. Right: Doric No.7, H.W. Caslon, 1919

However, Founders Grotesk is not intended as strict revival—the Miller & Richard Grotesques are simply used as a starting point. Founders Grotesk is a gentle amalgamation of several fonts, resolutely designed for contemporary typographic usage. A key glyph that demonstrates the departure from strict revivalism is the R. The R in the Miller & Richard range seemed slightly too awkward for a contemporary setting, so the Doric No.7 Series was consulted.

Grotesque No.4 Numerals, Miller & Richard, 1912

Due to the lack of large size numerals in the general showings, the dedicated numerics section in the back of the Miller & Richard specimen proved invaluable. Note the fascinating 5, which looks amazing here, but was deemed too anachronistic for Founders Grotesk. The narrow apertures of 5, 6 and 9 harmonise nicely with the C and G.

Grotesque No.4 Italics, Miller & Richard, 1912

The italics of the original Miller & Richard Grotesques are wonderfully slanted, they seem serious and daring at the same time. A similar slant has been designed into the Founders Grotesk italics, but there are also many key departures. For example, the spur on g tail, the protracted tail of the a, the curve on the u spur and the kink in the f were all discarded for more contemporary shapes.

Top row: Grotesque No.3 compared to Founders Grotesk Bold.
Bottom row: Doric No.4 compared to Founders Grotesk Light.

The spacing in Founders Grotesk is purposely tighter than any of the referenced typefaces. I have found that graphic designers will happily use a sans serif at all point sizes, often tracking the default spacing to suit the size. As it’s simply not possible to space a single font optimally for all point sizes, I feel that designers can obtain better results by opening tight spacing for text, rather than closing loose spacing for display.

Left: Haas Grotesk Medium, Christian Schwartz, 2003; digital version of Neue Haas Grotesk Halbfett, Max Miedinger, 1957
Right: Founders Grotesk Medium, -10 Tracking

During the development of Founders Grotesk I was made aware of the enduring qualities of Neue Haas Grotesk Halbfett (Medium). For display typography, the heft and weight is almost perfect. This had quite an influence on me, resulting in a close weight match to Founders Grotesk Medium. However, this is as far as the direct Neue Haas Grotesk influence extends.

Founders Grotesk was commissioned for completion for the upcoming redesign of a newspaper, lead by deLuxe & Associates. It includes five weights in roman and italic. Founders Grotesk ships in OpenType format and is available exclusively from vllg.com.

Kris Sowersby is a professional type designer from New Zealand. You can view his web site here, and buy his typefaces here.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

Founders Grotesk

Why would anyone in his or her right mind start a type foundry now? Well, to begin with, it’s often said that it’s a good idea to start a business in a recession. However, the type marketplace has gotten very crowded—there are more foundries and distributors of type in all sizes right now than at any previous time. Even the pre-machine setting peak of typefounding in the 19th century had a smaller number of foundries by many orders of magnitude. Notwithstanding all of the small foundries, a handful of large distributors dominate the general market, leaving the rest of us scrambling to find ever-shrinking niches. Why not just climb onboard with one of the big players and leave the business side to people who know what they’re doing? Would that be too easy?

At left is the Bureau des Affaires Typographiques (BAT), a foundry formed in 2009 by Bruno Bernard, Stéphane Buellet, Jean-Baptiste Levée and Patrick Paleta. Their website launched in April 2010. At right is The Indian Type Foundry, a joint venture launched in 2009 by Peter Biľak of Typotheque with Rajesh Kejriwal and Satya Rajpurohit.

It’s reassuring to know that we’re not the only ones with this crazy idea right now. There are a number of small new foundries that have just launched, or are about to launch, such as the Bureau des Affaires Typographiques in Paris and The Indian Type Foundry in the Netherlands and India.

At top is the ‘g’ from Schelter & Giesecke Grotesk, as revived in FF Bau Bold. Below is the single-story ‘g’ found in many of the clones of this typeface, including Alte Haas Grotesk and Nebiolo’s Etruscan.

My own particular story begins in 2002, when I released FF Bau with FontFont and got an email out of the blue from Paul Barnes, a designer in London, asking a very specific question about the lowercase g. I can’t find the original email, but it was something to the effect of “Where did you find your ‘g’? I’ve only seen the single story version in the historical sources I’ve seen. Did you make it up?” This was the beginning of a nerdy friendship that turned into a working relationship when Mark Porter, then the creative director at The Guardian, threw us together as a team for their 2005 redesign. This worked out well enough that we continued working together on custom typefaces for various clients, including the Empire State Building restoration, The New York Times style magazine T, and Condé Nast Portfolio, a business magazine that sadly became a casualty of the recession in 2009.

Without really being conscious of it it, several years had gone by and Paul and I were doing most of our projects as a team. What’s more the exclusivity on the Guardian family was soon going to expire and we had some decisions to make. To be honest, I don’t think we have another family like this in us. Designing Guardian, with its 6 components (some still not yet released) covering serif, sans, optical sizes, and even an agate in 4 grades, was a massive amount of work. This could be the foundation of a new foundry—a family that, if we were lucky, would sell well enough to allow us to indulge ourselves in some of our more bizarre ideas.

There are many drawbacks to starting a foundry, though, so we were reluctant to simply go ahead without exploring other options first. I’m not a graphic designer, so the idea of branding and marketing a new library just sounded like a big headache. Dealing with credit cards, tech support, bookkeeping, and talking on the phone sounded like an infinitely bigger set of headaches. Considering the hassles, the potential upsides seemed meager at first. Paul is a great graphic designer, so he was far more positive about the task of coming up with a visual identity than I was. The financial upside seemed murky at best—sure, in theory we’d make 100% of every sale, but how much would we have to spend to get to that point, and to maintain the business? And while the intangibles are nice, like the satisfaction of building something from the ground up, do they really outweigh the headaches?

Publishing with one or more established foundries

I had released families with a number of foundries over the years, and so we looked at our options there, but none of them seemed like quite the right fit for Guardian. We ruled each one out for different reasons. Some were too large, making us fear that our work might be lost in the shuffle. Did we really want to be just 8 of 80, 180, or 1080 families? Others didn’t have enough emphasis on the publication market, or had a specific aesthetic that didn’t match Guardian or much of the other work we had done together. Paul and I have eclectic but very specific taste, and we worried that our distinct point of view would likely be lost in a larger library.

The specific terms of the End User License Agreement – boring but important – were another issue. For example, Paul and I have relatively liberal views on PDF embedding, compared to many other foundries. On this and many other issues (such as web licensing) we would of course be able to state our viewpoints, but the final decision would ultimately be with the foundry publishing the work.

The round alternates in Giorgio Sans are pretty strange, but Paul Barnes took things to the next level with his extensive set of swashes and ligatures in the upcoming Dala Floda, used without swashes in the recent redesign of Creative Review.

Character sets were yet another issue. By working through different standards with different foundries for several years, seeing where my retail fonts were being licensed, and producing custom typefaces for various types of clients, I felt like I had been through an almost Goldilocks-like process of elimination: one foundry’s character set was too big, another foundry’s character set was too small, and I felt comfortable coming up with a character set that would be just right for us, with language coverage for most of Europe, (where the vast majority of our licenses sold before we launched our site) plus various bits and pieces that I think are important for good typography and convenience for the user. I am a firm believer in uppercase punctuation, for example. Being in control of our own character sets would also allow us to explore swashes and alternates in ways that an outside foundry publishing our work might not have the patience for.

Guardian Sans Headline is one example of a family featuring uppercase punctuation that we have published. Characters such as ¿, « and » are raised in all-caps text, in order to look more visually balanced. The Extra Condensed shown here was commissioned by the Vocento newspaper group in Spain and drawn by Berton Hasebe.

Finally, we realized that if we were publishing all of our work elsewhere, our working partnership would end up being a closed system. We wouldn’t have the opportunity to publish typefaces by other designers, like Lyon by Kai Bernau, for example. While it was hard to imagine a long-term future of publishing everything through a single outside foundry, continuing to publish with a variety of foundries didn’t seem ideal either. Not only would this break up our body of work, but it would also mean juggling wildly varying production workflows, character sets, release schedules and contract terms, not to mention the backlog of typefaces in each foundry’s pipeline each time we wanted to release something new.

A foundry in name only

Starting a foundry in name only, licensing through one or more distributors, seemed like an attractive option, and appears to be finding popularity with a growing number of type designers. After all, not everybody is the type world equivalent of Radiohead, able to thrive outside the establishment while making and marketing their work on their own terms. Radiohead self-released their 2007 album In Rainbows through their own website and allowed people to pay whatever they wanted for it. Although the band declared this experiment a success, sales figures were never released and the album did later end up in record stores and on iTunes, so maybe In Rainbows wasn’t necessarily the revolution it was made out to be?

If we signed with a distributor, we would be able to have our own website for marketing and showing our work, and send people to the distributor when they actually wanted to buy a license. We would also be able to come up with our own EULA, as well as standards for character sets, technical specs, and our own release schedule. In addition to our own marketing efforts, we would benefit from the distributors’ expertise with things like advertising and marketing through social media. As we thought more about it, though, we realized that we would just be one of many labels, all jockeying for position, promotion, and attention. Ultimately we weren’t convinced that there would be enough overlap between our priorities and a distributor’s priorities, and if we did decide at some point to sell licenses directly, we were worried that we would end up competing head to head for the same customers. If we already have a good idea of who our potential audience is and how to reach them, why not spend the percentage of each sale that a distributor would take on our own infrastructure and printed specimens instead? This left us convinced that a more formal partnership, and starting a foundry of our own, was the best way forward. The first order of business was a name.

Becoming Commercial

The Barnes & Schwartz Type Foundry was the most logical choice for a name, but seemed somehow… derivative; and It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. And what would it mean when we started releasing work by outside designers? Having already committed to releasing Lyon, because it was too great to pass up, we hated to think that people would assume that, since our names were “on the front door”, so to speak, we had designed the typeface and Kai Bernau wouldn’t end up getting proper credit for the design.

After spending a full week brainstorming, the name Commercial Type came to one of us. It seemed like a perfect fit for what we were trying to do: It’s a little bit Warhol, a little bit Factory Records. We aren’t pretending that we’re artists, and it makes us seem very upfront – almost cheekily so – about the fact that we are making products for sale. Considering the limited commercial prospects of some of our current and upcoming releases, the name takes on a certain amount of of irony.

The Commercial Type logo was designed by Paul Barnes, based on Dala Floda.

It’s much easier to be an “armchair quarterback,” second-guessing everyone else’s seemingly questionable decisions regarding everything from marketing to OpenType features, than it is to deal with the actual reality of budgets, technology, and timelines. Theorizing about how and why things work is all well and good, but putting our ideas into practice is of course the real test, and it’s been a little bit scary, especially where the web is concerned. Paul and I both have backgrounds in print design, specifically publication design, so we’ve had a hard time wrapping our minds around the totally different paradigms demanded by web design. We worked with Andy Pressman and Renda Morton at Rumors, a small design studio in New York, and they did an amazing job of focusing our thoughts so they could be turned into something concrete. While Paul and I can write, it’s not necessarily our biggest strength, so our main concept for the site has been showing rather than telling, devoting as much of the screen real estate as possible to showing the type. And a bigger screen means showing even more type.

All of the specimen images extend past the right edge of the browser window… unless you like to browse at full width on a 30” monitor, I suppose.

Gauging how long it would take to set everything up proved a lot more difficult than we anticipated. We finally launched at the beginning of January this year, but we had originally planned to launch in September 2008. We had no idea that it would take more than 3 or 4 months to define our brand, get the legal stuff all taken care of, design and build a website, finish some fonts, make specimens, and be approved by an underwriter for credit card processing. Who could have predicted that this would take so long, or that there would be so much to learn!? Now that the site is up and running, we have a whole new set of challenges, like putting together advertising budgets and learning just how much marketing strategies have changed since I last worked at a type foundry. The day to day can be tedious at times, but it is never boring!

So to recap, two years ago, Paul and I somewhat reluctantly decided to start a foundry after weighing all of our options, but gained momentum and enthusiasm throughout the process, and even suddenly find ourselves with an office and staff: a type designer, Berton Hasebe, who graduated from the Type & Media program at the KABK in 2008, and in the coming weeks a new administrator and our first ever summer intern will be starting work.

In the end, we wanted control over the context our work is presented in, and felt that this was worth the headaches of tech support, bookkeeping and payroll. We would like to think we have an interesting point of view, and want our foundry to be an extension of this, so we have been drawing on many of our interests and influences outside the sphere of type design, and even outside graphic design, for the design and text of our site and specimens.

The homepage was the most difficult component of the site to design, and we went in circles for over a year before Andy, Renda, and graphic designer Abi Huynh, who also designed our PDF specimens, came up with a simple and elegant way to introduce some motion and color to the site by constantly transitioning through a rotating set of messages.

What I’ve learned

This article is adapted from a talk I gave at the ATypI conference in Mexico City in October 2009. There were a number of recent graduates from type design master’s programs in attendance, some of whom had expressed interest in starting foundries of their own. While I certainly didn’t want to stand up on stage and give advice that may or may not apply to each individual situation, I concluded by talking about some of the circumstances in my career, some of which were conscious decisions and some of which were dumb luck, that I felt had prepared me for starting Commercial Type:

1. I’m really happy I learned the ropes of production and professional practice before starting Commercial Type, both through working at Font Bureau for two years in the early ’00s and through publishing families with a number of other foundries.

2. I’m glad I partnered up with someone with a different but complementary background, rather than another full-time type designer. Paul draws type beautifully, but his background in publication design is probably more important, because it has pointed us toward the vast majority of our good (or at least interesting) ideas. I think this makes our company more than the sum of its parts.

3. I’m happy that I’ve been able to balance retail and custom projects. There’s no better promotion for yourself as a custom type designer than releasing typefaces that people like, and commissions are an excellent source of retail fonts. After all, the client has already proven that there is some demand. Very different sets of skills are used when designing a typeface for a single specific use, versus designing one intended for general use. For example, Guardian Egyptian Text was designed to be used at 8pt on 9.5pt leading on the Guardian’s presses, mainly in columns that are 54mm wide, and was thoroughly tested with their ink, paper and pressmen; whereas Graphik was designed to be used for text or display at a wide range of sizes in newspapers, magazines, and corporate design. I’m glad I get to do some of each, because they inform one another.

4. I’m really happy that Paul and I waited to start a foundry until we had more than one or two families to release. The ups and downs of each individual family’s sales matter less because they balance one another out. Before we launched the website, enquiries tended to come in groups: one week 75% of the email that came in was about Lyon. The week before it had all been about Graphik, and the week after it was all about Publico. This has continued with direct sales through our web site. We are unable to explain or predict it. It’s very mysterious.

5. I’m glad I didn’t have any illusions that starting a foundry would mean I get to spend more time drawing. The business side of things eats up a lot of time, and luckily I don’t hate it. Which leads me to my final point:

Our PDF specimen for the Austin family, designed by Abi Huynh.

6. I’m glad I had time to learn my limits and learn how to delegate. Abi Huynh works with Paul on the graphic design, because I’m a mediocre graphic designer at best. Berton very handily takes care of much of the custom work these days. Rumors did a great job designing the website and found a brilliant programmer to build it. We have a really good accountant and a really good lawyer. This means that, although I draw less than I used to, I still get to draw, because I’ve made it a priority.   

You can follow @CommercialType on Twitter.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

Why did I start a type foundry?

By Paul Dijstelberge

MOVABLE TYPE: perhaps nowadays few will know the exact meaning of these two words, but until the middle of the twentieth century a letter was a small piece of lead, and to use it for printing you literally had to move it around, by hand. In the 20th century big machines like the Monotype, equipped with keyboard, were used for typesetting; but until 1900 all type was set by typesetters, by hand. This simple object: a piece of lead with a letter on top, formed the central part of Gutenberg’s invention, back in the middle of the 15th century.

To cast letters Gutenberg and all of the printers and type foundries that followed him used matrices. To make matrices you first had to cut punches, and the punch was the instrument where art and business met. The punches were made of steel — a little softer than today’s steel — that was cut with a sharp steel knife or an engraving tool. But still, to cut a letter on top of a very small piece of steel, and to do so with such precision and consistency required extraordinary skill. Remember the magnifying glass had not yet been invented and even eye glasses were very rare. To create the complete sets of more than a hundred different punches with letters, abbreviations, and other typographical signs that were all of the same size, all of the same design, and all equally pleasing to the eye when viewed en masse — it seems hardly conceivable that people were able to do just that. But they did it, and with results that we use up to this very day. The type designs we call roman are the grandchildren of one of the most beautiful romans ever created — a type created in about 1470 by the Frenchman Nicolaus Jenson, who was then working in Venice.

Roman, type 1, used by Jenson in De Proprietate Sermonis. Venice, 1476.

In the 15th century each printer made (or at least owned) his own type designs. At the end of the century specialist punchcutters started to trade in matrices and later also in type. Type design soon became the job of specialists, and if you look at 15th and early 16th century type you can easily see its development from modest albeit interesting beginnings to it becoming a great art. Many of the great type designs were created before 1550. These designs imitated the most elegant writing of their day, following the letters that were written by great humanists for kings. Scholars like Poggio imitated Carolingian handwriting, mistakenly attributing these manuscripts to antiquity, when in fact they were products of the ninth century.

Carolingian minuscule, 9th century.

Initials and ornaments

Until the 18th century and for brief periods in the 19th and early 20th century, books were often decorated with initials and ornaments. The earliest printed books were decorated by hand, like their written ancestors; but soon printers began to use little woodcuts that could be used year after year in thousands of copies.

Initials by the famous 16th century French printer Estienne, and his two Basle colleagues Froben & Oporinus.

These initials form a neglected form of art — an undercurrent of popular culture that has been the subject of very little scholarly research, most of it by book historians, practically none by art historians. The website we are creating is a first effort to change this. Many of these initials and ornaments are abstract, but most are figurative: little pictures that furnish unexpected insights into the thinking of our ancestors. They illustrate every human activity, and it is fun to trace the different pictorial traditions of countries and cities and all the changes they went through during those centuries. You will find musical instruments, beautiful women, defecating little angels, knights, and monsters of every kind. A town like Basel was especially rich in beautiful historiated initials — this was the influence of the famous German painter and engraver Hans Holbein (1497–1543) who designed many of them.

Book historians often use these little pieces of wood to identify printers — some of the most famous and subversive books of all ages were printed without the name of the publisher, and the research of this kind of book is a quest without end. But the sheer delight of looking at these beautiful little pieces of art is perhaps the most rewarding aspect.

Grand Gargantua

And so a grand project begins: with John (the editor of this blog), we are building a website to bring these rare treasures to everyone. Grand Gargantua — a history of typography will chart the course of typography from the incunabula. For some time, I have been photographing (in high resolution) books of the Amsterdam Special Collections, and uploading them to Flickr. Grand Gargantua will take this one step further, by organising and tagging these very high-resolution images, in addition to providing some commentary and historical perspective.

Our grand plan for Grand Gargantua is to gather some 50,000 samples in the next five or six years. We hope that you will follow us in our adventures. When we started out we had a small group of specialist book historians in mind as our audience, certainly not designers. But we soon discovered that many designers were interested in our work. For them we are creating an extra collection of examples of early book design. Here we will display pictures of pages and books from the 15th-19th century, sometimes accompanied by commentary. We are touched by this interest in the historical roots of a tradition that today is as alive and vigorous as it was all those centuries ago.

This work is made possible by the Amsterdam Special Collections who generously permit access to the material, The A D & L foundation and the Huizinga Institute who generously supplied the camera, a Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

Paul Dijstelberge (1956) was a restaurant cook for 14 years and an expert bibliographer for 17 years. He completed his PhD on the use of initials and ornaments in the 17th century, and currently works as an Associate Professor to Professor Dr Lisa Kuitert (History of the Book) at the University of Amsterdam; and as a curator at the Special Collections. He publishes in the field of the history of the book and also writes short stories that have been published in several literary magazines. He lives in Leiden with his wife and two daughters.

Photo credit: Bodoni punches (in the header) courtesy of Friends of the Palatina Library and the Bodoni Museum. Flickr.

A big thank you to Kari Pätilä, Grand Gargantua’s web developer.

History of the Book on Flickr.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

Creating Grand Gargantua

Though I have the utmost respect for Massimo Vignelli, and am a fan of his work, his we use too many typefaces is just plain wrong. It’s by no means the first time Vignelli has voiced these views. If you have no idea what I’m writing about, then watch this video:

For any designer to claim that a half-dozen or a dozen typefaces is enough — well that’s their prerogative. However, it’s one thing to say ‘twelve typefaces is enough for me’, but to claim ‘twelve typefaces is enough’, period; extrapolating a generalisation from a personal imposition is rarely, if ever helpful.

Taking his statement at face value, imagine a Vignellian world in which only twelve typefaces exist. Ignore for now that such an arbitrary limit would mean that a number of writing systems would be left without typefaces. Sorry, Chinese, sorry Arabic, but there aren’t enough to go round; pen and paper for you, I’m afraid. The global typographic landscape would look pretty bleak indeed. So, in deference to Mr Vignelii, let’s suppose that he is talking about twelve latin alphabet typefaces. Enough?

Let’s answer that below. For now, let us pose another related question. Why, instead of a handful of typefaces, do thousands upon thousands exist? True, a large number of them could be shredded tomorrow, and we’d probably be none the worse for their deletion. In fact, we might be better off as a consequence. Again, hold that thought, and join me in the arbitrarily selected sixteenth century. Looking around, we see that we already have more than our quota of a dozen typefaces at our disposal; in fact, there are thousands to choose from. German-speaking countries, and a swathe of Northern Europe have numerous blackletter types, while the remainder load their setting sticks with roman types first developed by pioneers like the brothers da Spira, and honed by Jenson. We even have numerous italic styles, ornaments, some wood type, broader- and narrower-set designs, varying x-heights, and different lengths of extenders. Surely, then, we have enough? Despite all these typefaces, Caslon, Baskerville, Bodoni (inventions of the 18th century), the slab serifs (e.g. the Clarendons), the grotesques (e.g. Akzidenz Grotesk), the geometric sans (e.g. Futura and Gotham), the neo-grotesques (e.g. Helvetica), the humanist sans of Martin Majoor (e.g. Scala Sans), Adrian Frutiger’s eponymous Frutiger, Erik Spiekermann’s Meta, and a comprehensive, unified super-familiy like Lucas de Groot’s Thesis — well, none of these has yet to make an appearance. No doubt there were those in the 16th century who shared Vignelli’s views. Every age is populated by those who think we’ve reached the apogee of progress.

Let’s return to the why question: why are there so many typefaces? For that matter, why are there so many designs of chair? Surely a dozen designs of chair would suffice. And, while we’re at it, let’s make do with a dozen designs of houses, tables, books, bridges, teacups, salt-shakers … everything. Why, then, do we see such profligacy in design? Because that’s what we do, that’s who we are. Our restless minds are always striving for ‘better’, for more functional, more comfortable, stronger, more durable, more economical, more ornate, simpler, more complex, smaller, bigger, greener, healthier, clearer, more legible; even, more aesthetically pleasing. That’s what we do. That same spirit, that inherent desire for progress, that indefatigable obsession with creation, that’s what we do.

During the Industrial Revolution (which Vignelli mentions), there was explosive growth in the number of typefaces available, a gargantuan proliferation of new designs. Advertisers demanded new designs, so that their work could be differentiated from the competition; and type designers too created new, non-commissioned type designs; thus demand drove supply, and supply fed and elicited demand. This era gave birth to the grandparents of Vignelli’s beloved Helvetica, a typeface that would never have existed but for our desire to do better, to progress, to create.

Thousands of typefaces exist simply because they are demanded and supplied, supplied and consumed. Moreover, technological progress, the desire for differentiation, the desire for more legible types, for types appropriate for new printing techniques, for the screen, for printing on new substrates — these challenges, these changing needs demand new solutions. Vignelli is an exceptional designer, and graphic design is arguably better off for its association with him. He has succeeded despite his limited, self-imposed type palette, but the world is bigger and more beautiful than Vignelli and his twelve apostles.

Related:
Cyrus Highsmith’s Do we need more fonts?
Michael Bierut’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface.
Video courtesy of bigthink.com

Sponsored by H&FJ.

The Vignelli Twelve

Dan Reynolds’ review of Bibliothèque Typographique’s
first book, José Mendoza y Almeida

Who is Jose Mendoza?

José Mendoza y Almeida was perhaps the most internationally active 20th century French type designer. While he also produced work for local distributors, his most significant faces were published by companies abroad, including the Amsterdam Typefoundry, Monotype, and ITC. Born in 1926, Mendoza’s career has been primarily devoted to activities in the fields of graphic design, illustration, and calligraphy. During his professional career, he has never worked as a full-time type designer, although he was a typographic educator from 1985–1990. His Pascal, Photina, and ITC Mendoza Roman typefaces are currently on the market, and each has played its own significant role in the history of 20th century type.

He’s the subject of a new book

The Paris-based Blibliothèque Typographique announced José Mendoza y Almeida in February. This is the first full-volume text in any language dedicated to Mendoza. The exquisite 169-page book offers a detailed glimpse into his type design work. Its bilingual text will hopefully ensure more recognition for Mendoza both at home and internationally.

Drawing for Photina

I must admit that before reading this book, I was not very familiar with Mendoza or his typefaces. On the occasions where I had come across his name, it was most often in connection with Photina. With so many typefaces to juggle in your mind, it is often only too easy to categorize them into little cupboards; you make associations in your head based on things you hear people say. Whenever I heard “Photina,” the bell that went off for me was, “the first good phototype family!” Yet this never drove me to the specimen books to examine Photina’s forms for myself. After reading this book, I can safely say how great a pity that was. Conceived as a kind of serif counterpart to Univers – in terms of family size and structure, not design – only eight weights of Photina were ever actually released. But Photina’s forms are ground-breakingly interesting, and this book displays them well. What would the family have looked like if all of the intended weights had been finished? How large an effect on the course of type design’s development would an enlarged Photina have had on the 1970s? Or on the 1980s? Pondering this book’s essay on Photina raises many “what if?” questions, a recurring theme throughout the text.

Why you should care

The more experience that I gain as a type designer, the more I realize how little I know or understand regarding the depths of French typeface history. Glancing at the surface of things, it would seem that there has been an unbroken lineage of excellence handed down from the past half-millennium that runs from Garamond, Granjon, and Jannon through to the Romain du Roi concept, the work of the Fourniers and Didots, across to the 20th and 21st centuries. The past 100 years alone have brought us the work of Georges Peignot, A.M. Cassandre, Marcel Jacno, François Ganeau, Roger Excoffon, Ladislas Mandel, Thierry Puyfoulhoux, Franck Jalleau, and Jean François Porchez. And this is before one mentions that the bulk of Adrian Frutiger’s career was spent working in France. There is also the writing of Maximilien Vox to consider. Several of my favorite designers from my own generation are French, including Jean-Baptiste Levée, Mathieu Réguer, and Jonathan Perez.

The problem with creating lists like the one above is that a tremendous amount is left out. History is not made up of the signposts along a trail, but rather by the footprints along the path. Rattling off a list of names offers no real understanding of why certain forms look the way they do, what drove the artisans who made them, and what all of this has to offer us in our current practice.

About the book

The strength of this book is the in-depth presentation of Mendoza’s three most-significant typefaces. Many photographs of Mendoza’s original sketches and production drawings are included in the book, artefacts that are disappearing from type design practice. Reading the book, I asked myself, how will the work of my own type-designer generation be documented by future historians? We do not leave behind the same breadcrumbs as our recent forebears.

Called the “godfather” of French type design by the authors, perhaps a more apt description for Mendoza might be “unsung hero.” His contribution to the canon of French design is significant, and may become more established with this book. Since Mendoza is not well-known to recent generations of designers—especially outside of France—more biographical information about him would have been interesting. In many ways, José Mendoza y Almeida reminds me of Fred Smeijers’ Type now. Both books have similar dimensions. The focus of José Mendoza y Almeida is narrower; it includes five essays encapsulating the process behind specific typefaces, or styles of typefaces, designed by Mendoza. The essays include:

1. Pascal (Martin Majoor)
2. Photina (Sébastien Morlighem)
3. Five calligraphic typefaces (Martin Majoor)
4. The invention of the “mécalde” (Sébastien Morlighem)
5. ITC Mendoza Roman (Sébastien Morlighem)

Above: Drawings for Mendoza Script

Below: Drawings for Père Castor

Unlike Type now, this book presents a more objective display of a designer’s body of work. The text was not prepared by the designer himself, so information is presented in a third person voice. The small, partially full-color “portfolio” section in the back of the book is less good. It feels removed from the main narrative of the book. Again, I tie mental parallels with Type now, whose end, color “portfolio” section is both more thought out, and more whimsical. José Mendoza y Almeida’s portfolio section includes images that seem to bear no relation to the main text of book. Were these images included just because they are pretty? Additionally, we see some glimpses of yearly “holiday cards” designed by Mendoza. Some other similar cards are presented on the inside flap of the back cover. Are these cards something that Mendoza designed and distributed every year? I did not find much mention of these in the text.

The French/English split of the text works well most of the time, with French texts displayed verso, English texts, recto. In captions the text is always presented in French first, followed by English. I quickly adapted to this, only being disrupted after flipping through extended spreads filled mostly with high-quality, well-reproduced images. They are so captivating that it was difficult for me to reorient my mind and my eye to reading regular text.

The book is set in Lyon Text, a Commercial Type face from Kai Bernau. Lyon Text imbibes from the fountain of Robert Granjon’s work. This gives it a similar air to Mendoza’s oeuvre. José Mendoza y Almeida explains that Mendoza’s work is deeply influenced by French humanist type from the Renaissance onward; and Granjon was one of this strand’s key players. Perhaps one could imagine the book set in a Mendoza face—particularly ITC Mendoza Roman; or an authorized Brennus revival might have been appropriate. In terms of “complete” typeface families, only Mendoza’s most recent release would likely fall into this category: ITC Mendoza Roman. Released in 1991, the family includes three weights, each with a companion italic. However, Pauline Nuñez’s (the book’s designer) decision to set the text in a more neutral typeface—similar in flavor but still different—helps set the images apart from the other pages. When an image appears, you are certain that it is featuring work by Mendoza himself.

Jan Middendorp’s introduction ends with a message to designers that is particularly apt for our time. I am thankful that he included it, and think that it should be repeated here. Perhaps a similar text should be included in more design books:

“With today’s technology, making quick ‘revivals’, capitalizing on the ideas that lend these alphabets their vibrant originality, may seem a piece of cake. But if anyone decides to ‘do something’ with these alphabets, he or she should proceed with caution and respect. Their designer is still alive and well, and he may have ideas about what to do it them – and what not.”

Mendoz’s legacy

Since Mendoza’s engagement with type design has been part-time, taking place over several decades, it seems that just as many of his concepts—if not more than half—were either never published, or have been withdrawn from the market owing to the closure of type manufacturers. Two instances covered are particularly representative: Pascal’s unreleased Italic, and the discontinued Brennus family. Pascal was Mendoza’s first typeface, published by the Amsterdam Typefoundry in 1962. Before the phototype era, this typeface was only distributed in a single weight. From 1962–1967, Mendoza worked with the Amsterdam Typefoundry to develop a Pascal italic, though it never came to market.

Drawings for Pascal Italic

Would it have been published, Pascal Italic may have been the world’s first humanist sans serif italic. Perhaps this does not sound so revolutionary now, as the average graphic designer most-likely has several of these in his font folder; but in 1967, none were available. Optima’s roman (similar to Pascal) was only sold with obliques, a trend that was the rule for grotesk-style sans serifs of the time.

Brennus was a two weight design for Socotep. The family was on the market during the 1980s, but is no longer in active distribution. This design is an almost monolinear Egyptienne, with oldstyle traces. For me, Brennus is the centerpiece of a chapter on “mécaldes,” which – according to Sébastien Morlighem – represent a genre invented by Mendoza. “Mécaldes” are a combination of “mécanes” and “garaldes,” two categories of type from Vox’s classification system. The typical English-language terms are slab serif and oldstyle. After reading this book, I was really left wanting to know more about Brennus, a Mendoza typeface no longer in distribution. This is not because I felt the text on Brennus lacking, or because I feel that Brennus offers some secret key to unlocking further type design understanding. I just really like the typeface, and would like to see more of it.

Monotype Recorder, 1979

A single-page Monotype advertisement from 1979 illustrates Mendoza in the company of Morison, Gill, and Van Krimpen. The ad is in English, and I wonder which four designers a French company might have chosen as their titans of 20th century type design. Would Mendoza have made the French list? On the other hand, that the advertisement was a Monotype one is revealing. At the time, type designers tended to be bound to certain foundries, or at least partner with one at a time. No foundry could yet claim to have all of a century’s famous European designers under one roof. This is one of many differences in 21st century font marketing. The period post-1979 has seen the rise of mega companies, which absorbed numerous smaller foundries from a number of countries. In the last two decades, we have also seen the rise of font distributors that resell the products of multiple companies and individual designers alike.

Drawing for Fidelio

Like Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger, or Hermann Zapf, Mendoza’s career spanned the changes of technology that revolutionized—and then re-revolutionized—type design. Pascal was initially released in metal for hand-setting. Most of Mendoza’s subsequent typefaces were developed for phototypesetting systems, although a few of them were converted by their respective foundries into digital format. Fidelio was first released by Mecanorma as dry transfer lettering, and ITC Mendoza Roman is a fully-digital typeface family. The history of 20th century type design shows us some designers who created fantastic romans, but may have failed with their companion Italics. Mendoza is not one of these. Not only are Photina’s italics—as well those from the ITC Mendoza Roman family—excellent, lively, legible, and interesting, but Mendoza’s mécalde italics seen in the Brennus family and elsewhere are just as powerful as their roman counterparts.

José Mendoza y Almeida is a real page-turner. I went from cover to cover in two afternoons. Not only was the book a fun read, but it made me think. Blibliothèque Typographique has issued a great production. The book contains a few minor flaws, but as an object it feels lovely in the hand. It also makes for very easy reading. The texture of the paper is optimal, the type clear, the layout engaging, and the illustrations rich. I highly recommend this book to anyone in the field.   

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Reynolds was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Before moving to Europe, he received a BFA in graphic design at the Rhode Island School of Design. Reynolds studied at the HfG Offenbach for a few years before receiving an MA in typeface design from the University of Reading (U.K.). Today, he lives in Berlin, Germany, where he works for Linotype GmbH and teaches typeface design at the Hochschule Darmstadt. His most recent typeface, Malabar, received a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design from the Type Directors Club, a silver medal at the ED-Awards 2009, and a gold medal from the 2010 Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany competition. Dan blogs from time to time at www.typeoff.de.

ORDERING INFORMATION
José Mendoza y Almeida
By Martin Majoor and Sébastien Morlighem. With an introduction by Jan Middendorp, who also translated the French texts into English.
Paris: Blibliothèque Typographique, Ypsilon Éditeur (2010).
French/English. 169 pages.

FURTHER READING
Savoie, Alice, French type foundries in the twentieth century.
Smeijers, Fred, Type now: a manifesto, plus works so far. London: Hyphen Press (2003).

Sponsored by H&FJ.

José Mendoza y Almeida