Akzidenz-Grotesk

Pronounced "Accidents Grotesque".

History

Akzidenz-Grotesk was released by the Berthold Type Foundry originally under the name "Accidenz-Grotesk" in 1896. Hermann Berthold started his type foundry in Berlin in 1858. The Berthold foundry is famous for creating several new typesetting machines and typefaces, such as Akzidenz-Grotesk (AG). AG was the first san-serif font to be used world wide. As I stated in my Franklin Gothic post, 'Grotesk' or 'Grotesque' was the name used in Europe for what we now call 'san-serif'.

Similarities

AG is commonly mistaken for Helvetica, but AG post-dates Helvetica by 40 years. AG has a more round letterform in its capitals (such as 'C', 'G', 'O', etc.) the its san-serf counterparts. The capital 'Q' has a short ear (leg) offshoot from the bottom-right of the letterform that does not cross into the loop, as it does in Helvetica. AG also has a slab or square dot on its lowercase 'i' and a higher second-story on the lowercase 'a'. Other characters have a more elegant or European-like form, such as the numbers '2' and '7'.

Current Uses

A Chicago company, Berthold Types, ltd. is now the owner of the AG and other original Berthold copyrights. Berthold Types recently (re)released an OpenType version of the AG, named Akzidenz-Grotesk Pro, with several world languages supported.

The most popular modern use of AG is in the American Red Cross logo.

Visual Study

Sources

http://www.fonts.com/font/berthold/akzidenz-grotesk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berthold_Type_Foundry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akzidenz-Grotesk
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/berthold/akzidenz-grotesk-bq/
http://www.bertholdtypes.com/font/akzidenz-grotesk/proplus/

Images used with permission:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg96wCNz39t3sDJaWPHrRuSxBlAa5-JyViH-S79IQS8Ve9iREtHJa7c5or4fdtJrj6A5tXXkyJK6SOnpBBt3giXrzYvUYMhnzgv2d3DYB0IlkZ-t7AQW6OtOYHBVm0BrQjzYiI5L5fAO3I/s1600/1873363809_8786cf6859.jpg
http://panhandleares.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/American_Red_Cross_Logo.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/AGcomparison08.svg

Franklin Gothic

History

Morris Fuller Benton, the son of the owner of a type foundry, created Franklin Gothic (FG) in the first few years of the 20th century. FG is a sans-serif font, but unlike the other sans-serif fonts developed in the 20th century, FG retains aspects of those of the 9th century; the full loop forming a bowl in the lowercase 'g' is one example. Released in 1905, FG quickly saw a condensed version to follow, as well as an extra condensed version the following year and oblique versions in 1913. Benton developed the concept of type families. While he wasn't the first to have this idea, it was a main underlier when creating FG.

Sans-Serif?

At the point of the introduction of Franklin Gothic, sans-serf fonts had been reguarly used for about 70 years ('Antique' by Vincent Figgens in 1832) – Wiliam Caslon IV created the earliest version latin in 1916 called 'Egyptian', although no examples can be found. Since then there was much debate on what to call the new letterform. 'Grotesque' was the name adopted in Britian, while in America they were calling the form 'Gothic' - typically associated with blackletter. Franklin Gothic's creator, Benton, was an American, thus the naming of the new sans-serf: Franklin GOTHIC.

It should be noted that other sans-serif fonts of the 20th century tended to exhibit cleaner ears and open-loop lowercase letters, like the 'g'.

Common Uses

The Franklin Gothic font family consists of a wide range of weight and italics, including:
• Book (Regular, Oblique, Condensed, Compressed, Extra Compressed)
• Demi (Regular, Condensed, Compressed, Extra Compressed)
• Heavy (Regular, Oblique)

The font style can be described as "assertive" as well as friendly. This makes it "an excellent type for children's books and advertising" (Dodd, 93). It would be interesting to study what inherent differences children's books and advertising have.

Fg has a large X-height, which makes it easier to read in smaller printed type. Being that it is a sans-serif font, it is naturally easier to read on screen, but would be best used for titles or headers allowing for body text to be simpler sans-serif fonts like Helvetica or Arial.

Visual Study

Sources

Dodd, Robin. From Gutenberg to opentype: an illustrated history of type from the earliest letterforms to the latest digital fonts. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 2006. Print.

"Typedia: ITC Franklin Gothic." Typedia: A Shared Encyclopedia of Typefaces. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2012. .

Images used with permission:
http://aliceshrum.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/morris-fuller-benton_web.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/FranklinGothicSP.svg

Times New Roman

History

The history of the English-speaking alphabet is attributed back to the Romans and their letterform inscriptions. One of the best samples of these inscriptions can be found cut into the base of Trajan’s Column, a finely carved column depicting Roman history. It was this well-preserved sample that inspired most serif fonts that we have today and the namesake for the typeface Trajan.

Times New Roman (TNR) was created in the 1930’s – yet not a direct revival of any historical typeface. TNR came about as a project by Stanley Morison to redesign the font for the London newspaper The Times. Morison had become quite a letterface historian and was working for the English Monotype Company at the time. The Times wanted a crisp, clean font that could be used at any size and for any need of the newspaper (e.g. headlines, columns, small advertisements, etc.). With the assistance of Victor Lardent, a lettering artist at The Times, Morison created the new design. The font they use prior had been known as Times Old Roman, thusly resulting in the new letterform design being called Times New Roman.

Controversy

However, there is some question to the legitimacy to Morison’s design. In the 1990’s a type specialist by the name of Mike Parker was asked to review a set of type plates being identified as being produced by the Lanson Monotype Company in 1915 commissioned for yacht and aircraft mogul Starling Burgess. The Lanson Company closed in 1916 due to financial problems and the plant burned down in 1918. It is suggested that The Lanson Company may have sent the plates to English Monotype Company to see if they had any use for it. There is no evidence that Morison ever saw the plates prior to creating TNR, but according to From Gutenberg to Open Type (Dodd, 109), “The similarity seems more than a coincidence.”

Common Uses

TNR is considered a Modern font and became very popular with printers after its use in The Times. The capitals are squared off, much like those on Trajan’s Column, has relatively short ascenders and descenders and sharply cut serifs. It is a practical and conservative letterform. Due to its popularity, TNR was one of the earliest fonts to be digitally converted for use on the computer. It was the typical default character set in Microsoft Word, until Office 2008 which uses Cambria; a similar-looking font that was designed for its readability on screen and at smaller sizes; the attributes that TNR was lacking.

Personal Thoughts

In my own opinion, Times New Roman is a heavily overused font-face due to it being the default in MS Word for so long, not to mention its prior history of overuse in printing. Corporate memos, Christmas letters, personal memoirs, homemade birthday invitations all come to mind when I think of TNR. It has become a font that everyone knows, which, like the other well-known fonts like Arial and Verdana become over-used by laypeople just looking for a font to serve an immediate purpose. Thankfully there are other interesting serif font options to use when the situation arises; like my previous post, Garamond.

Visual Study

For my visual study of Times New Roman, I wanted to take William Shakespeare' play Julius Caesar and portray Caesar in Times New Roman. While it is a Modern letterform, I wanted to bring the concept back to Roman times, where the serif letterform began. I was able to incorporate up to the end of Act II in to my piece which I've titled: "ET TV BRVTÉ?"


(Save image to desktop for full-size view)

Sources

Carter, Rob, Philip B. Meggs, and Ben Day. Typographic design: form and communication. 3rd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002. Print.

Dodd, Robin. From Gutenberg to opentype: an illustrated history of type from the earliest letterforms to the latest digital fonts. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 2006. Print.

Images used with permission:
https://www2.bc.edu/nicole-wei/7-trajans%20column.jpg
http://tipografos.net/designers/stanley-morison.png
http://www.codex99.com/typography/images/ancient/trajan_detail_lg.jpg"
http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/jscottbrooks/JuliusCaesarGrant-106_l.jpg

Garamond

History

Claude Garamond was a 16th century printer. After assisting with several prominent printers he became independent and established himself as the leading French typecutter (Dodd, 30). His type was to offer a more refined Aldine roman set over the popular Gothic blackletter types that were popular at the time. Garamond was the first typecutter to combine upper and lower case italic alphabet into a companion letterform set

In 1917 the American Type Foundry created a Garamond revival based on a matrices produced for the Calvinist Academy in Sedan in the 17th century. The set was reused in 1922 by Monotype Corporation to create their Garamond set. In 1926, historian Beatrice Warde discovered a 1621 Garamond specimen set and was able to note that the matrices that both sets were based on was created by Jean Jannon, not Claude Garamond. However, because of the popularity of the new Garamond font design in bookmaking, it was impossible to then rename the face.

Common Uses

Today, Garamond remains a very popular book face. Digitally, it doesn’t lend well as a display font (for use on web or other computer applications).

Tips:
From Gutterberg to Open Type suggests reduce the Tracking as you increase the font size to maintain a good word fit.

Visual Study

Each week I will be visually implementing that week's font in some way - comparative, artistic or simply showing the font in use.

For Garamond, being that it is the first font picked for this blog, I decided that a font comparison would be best. Since Garamond is an Old-Style/Old-Face font I wanted to compare it against other Old-Style fonts as well as Transitional and Modern designs. This is what I've come up with:

Sources

Carter, Rob, Philip B. Meggs, and Ben Day. Typographic design: form and communication. 3rd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002. Print.

Dodd, Robin. From Gutenberg to opentype: an illustrated history of type from the earliest letterforms to the latest digital fonts. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 2006. Print.

Images used without permission:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/ClaudeGaramond.jpeg
http://berkedoganogluva312.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/garamond.jpg

Typography: Terms & Definitions

There are several terms that are regularly used when discussing font faces that may not be commonly understood by the layperson. This introduction to my typography blog will cover the definitions of some of those basic terms. The definitions I'm using here are found in Typographic Design: Form and Communication, 5th edition. However, these are terms that date back to the beginning of of printing and moveable type and similar definitions can be found elsewhere.

Describing Letters

Baseline: The imaginary that the base of each capital sits.
Capline: The imaginary line that runs along the top of the capital letters.
Meanline: The imaginary line that establishes the height of the body of lowercase letters. This is often the 'mean' between the Capline and Baseline.
Beard line: The imaginary line that runs along the bottom of the descenders.
x-height: The distance from the Baseline to the Meanline. This is typically the height of lowercase letters (most easily measured on the lowercase 'x').
Optics: All characters align optically on the Baseline. The body height of lowercase characters align optically at the x-height and the tops of the capitals align at the top of the Capline.
Ascender: A stroke on a lowercase letter that rises above the Meanline.
Descender: A stroke on a lowercase letter that falls below the Baseline.
Serif: The short strokes that extend from and at an angle on the upper and lower ends of the major strokes of a letterform.
Sans-Serif: Describes a letterform without Serifs.
Stroke: Any of the linear elements within a letterform.

There are additional terms describing the nuances of type (Bowl Counter, Ear, Eye, Hairline, Leg, Spur, Stem, Tail...) that I may further cover in later posts if the need arises, when discussing specific fontfaces.

Weight: The ratio between the relative width of the strokes of a letterform and its height. This is described as Bold or Light.
Width: The ratio between the black vertical strokes and the intervals of white (i.e., whitespace or negative space - the enclosed area - bowl, loop or eye). This is described as Expanded or Condensed.
Thick/Thin Contrast: The visual relationship between a letters thickest and thinnest parts.
Stress: The visual axis of a letter.

Letterspacing

Leading: (pronounced LED-ing) The vertical space between lines of text. The name comes from original typesetters would add pieces of lead between lines of type to create more space. Non-designers are most familiar with this concept from the program Microsoft Word where it is simplified as 'single' or 'double-spaced'. In this example, the term 'double-spaced' would mean that if you are using a 12 point font there would be a (approximately) 24 point space between lines. More Leading (in the 'double-space' example) makes each line of text easier to read. Most books read for leisure would have more leading.
Tracking: Tracking is the consistant horizontal spacing between characters. Smaller type tends to need a wider Tracking, while Larger type like headers or titles can have a tighter Tracking.
Kerning: The horizontal spacing between individual characters. This is different between Tracking because it deals specifically with pair of characters. You may apply Tracking to a block of text, but you would apply Kerning to individual letter pairs to adjust them if they look spaced visually incorrect.

Sources

Carter, Rob, Philip B. Meggs, and Ben Day. Typographic design: form and communication. 3rd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002. Print.

Dodd, Robin. From Gutenberg to opentype: an illustrated history of type from the earliest letterforms to the latest digital fonts. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 2006. Print.

Type samples image used without permission, from Typographic Design: Form and Communication, 5th ed., Carter/Day/Meggs

Font Independent Study Syllabus

Independent Study Syllabus (38k)