Sunday, December 5, 2010

Culture of Type

Typography is a powerful tool in the world of design.  There are so many different typefaces to choose from, and depending on the way they will be used, some are better than others. Three typefaces that I feel have had a strong impact on our society are Times New Roman, Calibri and Caslon.

Times New Roman
Times New Roman is a serif typeface that you may recognize from The Times newspaper. Times New Roman was created by Cameron Latham at the English branch of Monotype in 1931 (1). He was commissioned by The Times newspaper after Stanley Morison criticized the paper for being “badly printed and typographically behind the times (2).” Victor Lardent, an artist from The Times, drafted the font under Morison’s supervision. The font made its debut in the October 1932 issue of The Times newspaper (3). The typeface was released for commercial sale one year later. Times New Roman has been very influential in the development of a number of serif typefaces before and after the digital-font era. One example is Georgia, which has wider serifs but similar stroke shapes to Times New Roman. Today, Times New Roman is no longer used by The Times, however it is still widely used in book typography. It has become one of the most “ubiquitous” typefaces in history due to its adaptation in Microsoft products (4).



Lucas de Groot
Calibri
Calibri, a humanist sans-serif typeface, replaced Times New Roman as the default typeface in Word, and replaced Arial as the default typeface in PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook (5). It is the default typeface in Microsoft Office 2010. Calibri was designed to take advantage of Microsoft’s “ClearType” rendering Technology. It consists of subtle rounded stems and corners that are more visible when enlarged. Calibri includes unique italic type options which are more common in modern typefaces (7). Its many curves and new rasteriser work in bigger sizes to make a warm and soft character. The proportions allow high impact tightly set lines (6). Lucas de Groot, a dutch type designer pictured left, designed Calibri. He teaches at the Design Faculty of the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam, Germany (8).

Caslon
Caslon is a serif typeface that is great for body text. It is a popular choice for books, magazines, journals, or for corporate typefaces. It shares the “irregularity” characteristic of Dutch Baroque types. Short ascenders and descenders, moderately-high contrast, bracketed serifs, robust texture and a moderate variation of stroke are some of the characteristics of Caslon. Caslon was named after and designed by William Caslon, who created them in 1720. The font Caslon includes an extended set of serif typefaces (9). His types were based on 17th century Dutch old style designs, which were used mainly in England. Caslon’s designs were very successful because of their practicality. As a result, his types were popular throughout Europe and American colonies (10). Benjamin Franklin liked the fonts made by William Caslon so much that he used them almost exclusively for printing (9).

All three of these typefaces share significance in our culture because of their broad use, impact on culture, popularity and functionality. Although they are each very different from one another stylistically, I think they are all equally attractive and elegant fonts.

Bibliography:

1-       Loxley, Simon (2006). Type: the secret history of letters. I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. pp. 130–131. ISBN 1 84511 028 5.
2-      Carter, H. G. (2004). ‘Morison, Stanley Arthur (1889–1967)’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, rev. David McKitterick. Oxford University Press,

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