Super Family Typefaces

Many roman types consist of a family of fonts in the range of roman, bold, italic and perhaps small caps (which are not the same as reduced-size capitals). Semi-bold may be in the mix too. Some type families consist of only a couple of fonts, such as roman and bold.

There are, however, super families, which are priceless for both versatility and consistency, for they share basic structures whilst giving each font within the family a different weight and space. Super families give a designer the ability to mix typefaces successfully without a piece looking overdone. 

Super families are especially useful in books that contain several recurring elements that all need to appear as separate information on the same page; for example body text, sidebars, tables, captions, headings and subheadings, footnotes, etc. All these different elements can maintain a consistent look by the use of super family types, which have various weights and styles, such as thin, light, condensed, black, compressed and medium, on top of the fonts mentioned above.

Helvetica is one such super family and was mentioned in last month’s post. 

So is Scala, designed by Martin Majoor in the early 1990s.

The serif, the sans serif and the open type formats of Scala all have a common spine, yet each font has a unique look. 

Another example is Jeremy Tankard's Trilogy, created in 2009, which includes Egyptian, sans serif and fat face. I think this super family is especially beautiful, with its extremely thin lines contrasting with very fat ones and with such gorgeous details (notice the “CEREMONY” M and N skinny serifs and fat curly-cues, and take note of the lovely R).

The Last Word On My History of Typefaces

So far I have discussed Black Letter, Old Style, Transitional and Modern typefaces.

Here’s a quick breakdown:

Black Letter: the first typeface – its paradigm was the scrolls of medieval scribes. It has thick vertical lines and thin horizontal connectors. Today we regard this kind of typeface as good for headlines, but not for body text.

Old Style: letters with thick serifs and low contrast between thick and thin strokes. These first roman types arrived in the fifteenth century as an alternative to Black Letter and were an instant hit for readability.

Transitional: letters with thinner serifs and a higher contrast between thick and thin strokes. Popular in Europe and the U.S., these are still used today.

Modern: the styles of these typefaces include very thin serifs and extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes. Like the others mentioned above, these are still in use and in fact currently popular with designers for marketing pieces.

HOWEVER…all these typefaces did have one thing in common: Serifs.

William Caslon’s great grandson, William Caslon IV, decided change was in order. He designed a typeface without serifs. This new kind of typeface is now known as sans serif.  It took a while to catch on but as we all know, sans serif fonts are now extremely popular. One of their first uses was in billboard advertising where letters had to be wide and tall, and sans serifs were a good fit for this. As well, they are a good contrast to serif types, with many documents today containing a mix of two or more different typefaces for effect.

Could you read a page of this?

After this innovation, many would-be typographers got in on the act and a slew of new sans serif faces appeared, some of them completely illegible due to being too chunky or abstract. 

However, we also have this period to thank for some timeless new typefaces, both serif and sans serif. For instance, slab serifs – also known as Egyptian because of the thick, block-like serifs that simulate those seen on hieroglyphics – are huge today and we see variations of them on TV, in books, in advertising and on business pieces. They make catchy headings that stand out in aesthetically pleasing ways. Rockwell is an example of a slab serif.

Later still came another artistic creation in the design of typeface, the geometric sans. Futura, designed by Paul Renner, has a foundation of geometric principles: squares and circles.

Gill Sans, by Eric Gill, is similar but not as stark – with its softer curves it became known as humanist sans.

More recently still – fifty years ago – the sans serif Helvetica was developed by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann to fulfill a need for a typeface that could be used for various purposes and in various weights.

Helvetica has many fonts, from bold to light, from Black to condensed; it is extremely versatile, because with just one type family a designer still can create an eye-catching document using various fonts for headers, tables, etc.

Trivia Break:

Helvetica is one of the most global typefaces in the sans serif style. Even Japanese, Hebrew, Greek, Chinese and other non-Western alphabets have a version of Helvetica for use in their own languages.

                          

Today

The advent of computers meant easier typeface design, at least after the early problem years were behind us (when early screens with their obvious and clumsy-looking pixels hindered such development). Now there are thousands of new typefaces that are easy to buy and download.

We no longer need to consider issues of the old printing press days, such as fitting a last spare line onto a full page, for we can now kern and track our letters, reduce a type size or the leading and so on. We can choose typefaces that fit different functions. Life in the printing, marketing and design worlds has never been easier.

Western Typeface Evolution (continued)

The next biggie after the fifteenth century's Jenson was  in the eighteenth century, when William Caslon set a new standard for legibility. His typeface, with its thick serifs, is referred to now as Old Style.

CASLON

Caslon has a full-bodied texture and little contrast between thick and thin strokes. It became popular due to its easy-to-see quality, especially in the days of hot type and unrefined paper.

The next innovation, a few decades later, became known as Transitional. John Baskerville's typeface is seen now as in between the previous Old Style of Caslon, and the later modern styles of Didot and Bodoni. The Baskerville fonts have a higher contrast between the thick and thin strokes.

As well, thinner serifs, and with tapers leading from the strokes to the serifs, made for a more regular appearance overall. The serifs were straight across or up and down, as opposed to slanted like Caslon's.

Baskerville's typeface was not popular in his home country of Britain, where some complained the starkness was bad for their eyes. However, it was a big hit abroad. Benjamin Franklin was an admirer of this typeface.

Modern styles came next, from Firmin Didot and Giambattista Bodoni. These types have very flat and sudden serifs and the whole look stresses the horizontal.

The thick and thin strokes in Didot and Bodoni typefaces are highly contrasted and the rounded letters are very circular - almost "fat" in their appearance. In a way, these modern styles are seen as the last step in the journey away from the calligraphic texts of the middle ages and earlier, and continue to be popular in design and advertising.


Trivia break:
In my last post, I mentioned Aldus Menutius' achievements in the Middle Ages. Did you know he is also credited with reviving the semicolon, which had not been used since ancient Greek times (and even then, the symbol was used as a question mark). The semicolon's use spread across Europe after Menutius first used it in "De Aetna." Now, of course, it is an essential element of punctuation. The National Library of Scotland has Menutius works in its collection, including examples of the semicolon.

After Black Letter: Fifteenth Century

[Continuing on from last month's Medieval Typography post]

Gutenberg’s Black Letter types were gradually replaced by a lettera antica style during the Renaissance. This was preferred by Humanist writers and scholars and was more open and easy-to-read, although gothic typefaces have remained popular to this day, just gradually declining in use. 

Nicholas Jenson merged the gothic with the Italian type styles and came up with straighter lines and more regular curves, for the first roman typefaces. His fifteenth-century type was named after him and is still used today. Others from that time that are still in use are Garamond, Palatino and Bembo.

Trivia break:  

Jenson designed beautiful capitals that echoed carved letters seen in Roman architecture. His typeface was very readable and balanced, and even as late as the nineteenth century, he had admirers that imitated or evolved his style, including William Morris of the Arts and Crafts movement.

 

Because of their lighter shapes, roman letters lent themselves to another possibility: italics, which allowed for more words on a page due to the cursive letters being closer together. Aldus Manutius created these for his newly invented portable books. Italics saved time and space.

By the sixteenth century, those in the printing business were creating type families that included both roman and italic letters. Nowadays, of course, we use italics to stress a phrase or word or for a publication or film title. Italicizing is a popular tool in design.

Italics, however, are not just slanted roman letters. Italics carry over some elements from the parent roman letters in their type family, but are a completely different shape. Often this can be seen most clearly in the letter “a” – which in italics can appear as “a”.

 

Think New Year, Think New Type

Read the type...this is not hype...the time is ripe...to BE a type...

"She's a reliable type."   "He's a good type."   "That's a great type of company."  

"She's the type that's always on time."   "He's the type that meets deadlines."

Puns aside - they'll take you seriously if you take them seriously.

(Click on the image below.)


In Appreciation of Written Word

Enjoy my "through the years" morphology of TEXT and TYPE ... from cave scratchings to screen pixels!

Medieval Typography

Black Letter

Early print houses molded individual letters from lead in order to mass-print books on printing presses first invented by Gutenberg in the 15^th century (he had taken the idea for his life-changing invention from one day looking at wine presses and making a connection). These early typefaces were Black Letter, simulating the Gothic handwriting of scribes from earlier centuries, and were popular right up to the 20^th century, especially in Germany.






Although today we employ typefaces such as Humanist, Modern and others easier for contempory audiences to read, one tradition remains from the Middle Ages, and that is the drop cap, which although not
 the colourful, detailed drawings of early monks, nonetheless mark the beginning of a chapter.

 Individual characters gradually became lighter and more Roman, influenced by regional handwriting styles. Future posts will detail these later designs, but for now, have a look at the Black Letter typeface above – although illegible to many today, one must admit there is a certain beauty to Black Letter.


Many newspapers use some form of Black Letter for their name brand even today. See below.