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118-558: Bembo is a serif typeface created by the British branch of the Monotype Corporation in 1928–1929 and most commonly used for body text . It is a member of the " old-style " of serif fonts, with its regular or roman style based on a design cut around 1495 by Francesco Griffo for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius , sometimes generically called the "Aldine roman". Bembo is named for Manutius's first publication with it,

236-486: A breakthrough leading to an "ideal balance of beauty and functionality", as earlier has Harry Carter. The type is sometimes known as the "Aldine roman" after Manutius' name. In France, his work inspired many French printers and punchcutters such as Robert Estienne and Claude Garamond from 1530 onwards, even though the typeface of De Aetna with its original capitals was apparently used in only about twelve books between 1496 and 1499. Historian Beatrice Warde suggested in

354-553: A division made on the Vox-ATypI classification system. Nonetheless, some have argued that the difference is excessively abstract, hard to spot except to specialists and implies a clearer separation between styles than originally appeared. Modern typefaces such as Arno and Trinité may fuse both styles. Early "humanist" roman types were introduced in Italy. Modelled on the script of the period, they tend to feature an "e" in which

472-678: A good sense of design can make the grade if they know their stuff – whether he or she is a man or a woman". She became acquainted with Bruce Rogers and, on his recommendation, was appointed after graduation to the post of assistant librarian to the American Type Founders Company. She worked in Jersey City under Henry Lewis Bullen , where she concentrated on self-education and research. While there she became acquainted with eminent typographers including Daniel Berkeley Updike and Stanley Morison , who later played

590-526: A great interest in antique furniture and a rather vague address in Montparnasse ." She noted that the deception confused, but was not immediately suspected by other historians, who were surprised to read a work by a Frenchman in idiomatic English and mocking received wisdom by quoting from The Hunting of the Snark . After publishing her discovery of Garamond's origin, "Paul Beaujon" was in 1927 offered

708-434: A highly influential part in her professional life. She remained there from 1921 to 1925. While at ATF she was intrigued by Bullen's comment that he was sure the "Garamond" type his company was reviving, supposedly the work of sixteenth-century engraver Claude Garamond , was actually the work of someone else, noting that he had never seen it in a book of the period. Recognising that the future of typographic and book design

826-467: A large collection of Manutius's printing, have described this as a "wholesale change ... the press followed precedent; popular in France, [these] types rapidly spread over western Europe". Ultimately, old-style fonts like all of these fell out of use with the arrival of the much more geometric Didone types of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They returned to popularity later in the century, with

944-430: A large range of sizes. In addition, hand printing had been superseded by the hot metal typesetting systems of the period, of which Monotype's was one of the most popular (in competition with that of Linotype's ). Both allowed metal type to be quickly cast under the control of a keyboard, eliminating the need to manually cast metal type and slot it into place into a printing press. With no need to keep type in stock, just

1062-520: A left-inclining curve axis with weight stress at about 8 and 2 o'clock; serifs are almost always bracketed (they have curves connecting the serif to the stroke); head serifs are often angled. Old-style faces evolved over time, showing increasing abstraction from what would now be considered handwriting and blackletter characteristics, and often increased delicacy or contrast as printing technique improved. Old-style faces have often sub-divided into 'Venetian' (or ' humanist ') and ' Garalde ' (or 'Aldine'),

1180-468: A more delicate and elegant design. A major professional competitor to Bembo is Agmena, created by Jovica Veljović and released by Linotype in 2014. Intended as a unified serif design supporting Roman, Greek and a range of Cyrillic alphabets such as Serbian, it features a more calligraphic italic than Bembo with swash capitals and support for Greek ligatures . A looser interpretation of the Griffo designs

1298-437: A necessity for the printing industry to do its best. For Warde, this meant teaching good handwriting and designing attractive schoolbooks for children. All of this was to promote "a general, high, critical standard in the public at large". As Allen Hutt wrote in 1969: "The Crystal Goblet" is an essay on typography by Beatrice Warde. The essay was first delivered as a speech, called "Printing Should Be Invisible," given to

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1416-506: A previous more faithful revival of Manutius's work, Poliphilus, whose reputation it largely eclipsed. Monotype also created a second, much more eccentric italic for it to the design of calligrapher Alfred Fairbank , which also did not receive the same attention as the normal version of Bembo. Since its creation, Bembo has enjoyed continuing popularity as an attractive, legible book typeface. Prominent users of Bembo have included Penguin Books ,

1534-399: A quite large letter at an approximate size of 15 points. The changes made were looser spacing, higher x-height (taller lower-case letters) and a more solid colour of impression at smaller sizes, and a finer, more graceful and tightly spaced design at large sizes. Among Bembo's more distinctive characteristics, the capital "Q" ' s tail starts from the glyph's centre, the uppercase "J" has

1652-403: A sans serif font versus a serif font. When size of an individual glyph is 9–20 pixels, proportional serifs and some lines of most glyphs of common vector fonts are smaller than individual pixels. Hinting , spatial anti-aliasing , and subpixel rendering allow to render distinguishable serifs even in this case, but their proportions and appearance are off and thickness is close to many lines of

1770-418: A series of breakthroughs in printing technology which had occurred over the last fifty years without breaking from the use of metal type. Pantograph engraving had allowed punches to be precisely machined from large plan drawings. This gave a cleaner result than historic typefaces whose master punches had been hand-carved out of steel at the exact size of the desired letter. It also allowed rapid development of

1888-402: A slight hook and the sides of the "M" splay outwards slightly. The 'A' has a flat top. Many lowercase letters show subtle, sinuous curves; the termination of the arm of both the r and the e flare slightly upward and outward. The lowercase "c" and "e" push slightly forwards. Characters "h", "m", and "n" are not quite vertical on their right-hand stems, with a subtle curve towards the left going down

2006-485: A small 1496 book by the poet and cleric Pietro Bembo . The italic is based on work by Giovanni Antonio Tagliente , a calligrapher who worked as a printer in the 1520s, after the time of Manutius and Griffo. Monotype created Bembo during a period of renewed interest in the printing of the Italian Renaissance , under the influence of Monotype executive and printing historian Stanley Morison . It followed

2124-422: A softened version of the same basic design, with reduced contrast. Didone typefaces achieved dominance of printing in the early 19th-century printing before declining in popularity in the second half of the century and especially in the 20th as new designs and revivals of old-style faces emerged. In print, Didone fonts are often used on high-gloss magazine paper for magazines such as Harper's Bazaar , where

2242-495: A version of Perpetua for Morison. This more delicate "Griffo" revival (1929) was used in handprinting and not developed for use outside Mardersteig's company. In the 1940s, Mardersteig developed plans for a second design, Dante , which was again cut by Malin slowly from 1946 onwards but taken also up by Monotype. Monotype Dante Series 592, Dante Semi Bold Series 682 and Dante Titling Series 612, were only produced in Didot -sizes. It

2360-421: A version under the name of "Aldine 401". Its licensee ParaType later created a set of Cyrillic characters for this in 2008. The name "Bembo" remains a Monotype trademark and may not be used to describe such clones. Two open-source designs based on Bembo are Cardo and ET Book. The Cardo fonts, developed by David J. Perry for use in classical scholarship and also including Greek and Hebrew, are freely available under

2478-401: A vertical stress and thin serifs with a constant width, with minimal bracketing (constant width). Serifs tend to be very thin, and vertical lines very heavy. Didone fonts are often considered to be less readable than transitional or old-style serif typefaces. Period examples include Bodoni , Didot , and Walbaum . Computer Modern is a popular contemporary example. The very popular Century is

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2596-544: A writing manual, The True Art of Excellent Writing , in Venice in 1524, after the time of Manutius and Griffo, with engravings and some text set in an italic typeface presumably based on his calligraphy. (Tagliente did not only publish on handwriting, but also self-help guides on learning to read, arithmetic, embroidery and a book of model love letters.) It too was imitated in France, with imitations appearing from 1528 onwards. Another influential italic type created around this time

2714-498: Is Iowan Old Style , designed by John Downer and also released by Bitstream. With a larger x-height (taller lower-case letters) than the print-oriented Bembo and influences of signpainting (Downer's former profession), it was intended to be particularly clear for reading at distance, in displays and in signage. It is a default font in the Apple Books application. Not explicitly influenced by Bembo but also influenced by Griffo

2832-431: Is Minion by Slimbach. Released by Adobe , a 2008 survey ranked it as one of the most popular typefaces used in modern fine printing. Besides designs with similar inspiration, a number of unofficial releases and digitisations of Bembo have been made in the phototypesetting and digital periods, reflecting the lack of effective intellectual property protection for typefaces. Several unofficial versions were released during

2950-521: Is commonly used on headings, websites, signs and billboards. A Japanese-language font designed in imitation of western serifs also exists. Farang Ses, designed in 1913, was the first Thai typeface to employ thick and thin strokes reflecting old-style serif Latin typefaces, and became extremely popular, with its derivatives widely used into the digital age. (Examples: Angsana UPC, Kinnari ) Beatrice Warde Beatrice Lamberton Warde (September 20, 1900 – September 16, 1969, née Beatrice Becker )

3068-469: Is ended with a dipping motion of the brush, the ending of horizontal strokes are also thickened . These design forces resulted in the current Song typeface characterized by thick vertical strokes contrasted with thin horizontal strokes, triangular ornaments at the end of single horizontal strokes, and overall geometrical regularity. In Japanese typography, the equivalent of serifs on kanji and kana characters are called uroko —"fish scales". In Chinese,

3186-596: Is now significant as a common reading in the study of typography and graphic design. The essay has been reprinted many times and is a touchstone for the concept of "clear" typography and the straightforward presentation of content. Days after her 1930 address, the lecture appeared in a newsletter called the British & Colonial Printer & Stationer. It was printed again as a pamphlet in 1932 and 1937. Thenceforward, it appeared as either "The Crystal Goblet" or "The Crystal Goblet, or Printing Should Be Invisible." In 1955 it

3304-687: Is one of the most famous revivals of the Aldine typeface of 1495. It was created under the influence of Monotype executive and printing historian Stanley Morison by the design team at the Monotype factory in Salfords , Surrey , south of London. While most printers of the Arts and Crafts movement of the previous sixty years had been more interested in the slightly earlier typefaces of Nicolas Jenson, Morison greatly admired Aldus Manutius' typeface above others of

3422-404: Is sold by a range of vendors, often at very low prices. As an example of this, Fontsite obtained the rights to resell a derivative of the original digitisation, using the alternative name Borgia and Bergamo, upgrading it by additional OpenType features such as small capitals and historical alternative characters. Neither version includes digitisations of the larger size versions of Bembo, which had

3540-633: Is that serifs were devised to neaten the ends of lines as they were chiselled into stone. The origin of the word 'serif' is obscure, but apparently is almost as recent as the type style. The book The British Standard of the Capital Letters contained in the Roman Alphabet, forming a complete code of systematic rules for a mathematical construction and accurate formation of the same (1813) by William Hollins , defined 'surripses', usually pronounced "surriphs", as "projections which appear at

3658-488: Is the printed capital I , where the addition of serifs distinguishes the character from lowercase L (l). The printed capital J and the numeral 1 are also often handwritten with serifs. Below are some images of serif letterforms across history: In the Chinese and Japanese writing systems, there are common type styles based on the regular script for Chinese characters akin to serif and sans serif fonts in

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3776-404: Is the all-time classic roman; if I were stuck on a desert island with only one typeface, that would be it." Digital font designer Nick Shinn has also commented, "Bembo has a sleek magnificence, born of high-precision technology at the service of accomplished production skills, which honours the spirit of the original, and an exotic grace of line which humbles most new designs made more ostensibly for

3894-499: Is the past tense of schrijven (to write). The relation between schreef and schrappen is documented by Van Veen and Van der Sijs. In her book Chronologisch Woordenboek , Van der Sijs lists words by first known publication in the language area that is the Netherlands today: The OED ' s earliest citation for "grotesque" in this sense is 1875, giving 'stone-letter' as a synonym . It would seem to mean "out of

4012-608: The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) are 1830 for 'serif' and 1841 for 'sans serif'. The OED speculates that 'serif' was a back-formation from 'sanserif'. Webster's Third New International Dictionary traces 'serif' to the Dutch noun schreef , meaning "line, stroke of the pen", related to the verb schrappen , "to delete, strike through" ( 'schreef' now also means "serif" in Dutch). Yet, schreef

4130-599: The British Typographers' Guild at the St Bride Institute in London, on October 7, 1930. Like many of Warde's other writings, the essay was written with the intent to be spoken before printed, as she carefully considered the invocations of voice, presence, and personal connection while reading aloud. The essay is notable historically as a call for increased clarity in printing and typography. It

4248-560: The Everyman's Library series, Oxford University Press , Cambridge University Press , the National Gallery , Yale University Press and Edward Tufte . Bembo has been released in versions for phototypesetting and in several revivals as digital fonts by Monotype and other companies. The regular (roman) style of Bembo is based on Griffo 's typeface for Manutius. Griffo, sometimes called Francesco da Bologna (of Bologna ),

4366-475: The Janson and Ehrhardt types based on his work and Caslon , especially the larger sizes. Transitional, or baroque, serif typefaces first became common around the mid-18th century until the start of the 19th. They are in between "old style" and "modern" fonts, thus the name "transitional". Differences between thick and thin lines are more pronounced than they are in old style, but less dramatic than they are in

4484-663: The SIL Open Font License . Unimpressed by the first Bembo digitisation, statistician and designer Edward Tufte commissioned an alternative digitisation for his books in a limited range of styles and languages, sometimes called 'ET Bembo'. He released it publicly under the MIT License as an open-source font named 'ET Book' in September 2015. In 2019, Daniel Benjamin Miller released XETBook (extended ET Book) under

4602-524: The germanophone world, with the Antiqua–Fraktur dispute often dividing along ideological or political lines. After the mid-20th century, Fraktur fell out of favor and Antiqua-based typefaces became the official standard in Germany. (In German, the term "Antiqua" refers to serif typefaces. ) A new genre of serif type developed around the 17th century in the Netherlands and Germany that came to be called

4720-429: The wood grain on printing blocks ran horizontally, it was fairly easy to carve horizontal lines with the grain. However, carving vertical or slanted patterns was difficult because those patterns intersect with the grain and break easily. This resulted in a typeface that has thin horizontal strokes and thick vertical strokes . In accordance with Chinese calligraphy ( kaiti style in particular), where each horizontal stroke

4838-456: The "Dutch taste" ( "goût Hollandois" in French ). It was a tendency towards denser, more solid typefaces, often with a high x-height (tall lower-case letters) and a sharp contrast between thick and thin strokes, perhaps influenced by blackletter faces. Artists in the "Dutch taste" style include Hendrik van den Keere , Nicolaas Briot, Christoffel van Dijck , Miklós Tótfalusi Kis and

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4956-617: The "Latin" style include Wide Latin , Copperplate Gothic , Johnston Delf Smith and the more restrained Méridien . Serifed fonts are widely used for body text because they are considered easier to read than sans-serif fonts in print. Colin Wheildon, who conducted scientific studies from 1982 to 1990, found that sans serif fonts created various difficulties for readers that impaired their comprehension. According to Kathleen Tinkel, studies suggest that "most sans serif typefaces may be slightly less legible than most serif faces, but ...

5074-457: The "M"; Cloister is an exception. Antiqua ( / æ n ˈ t iː k w ə / ) is a style of typeface used to mimic styles of handwriting or calligraphy common during the 15th and 16th centuries. Letters are designed to flow, and strokes connect together in a continuous fashion; in this way it is often contrasted with Fraktur -style typefaces where the individual strokes are broken apart. The two typefaces were used alongside each other in

5192-474: The 1520s, being again loosely based on the work of Arrighi from around 1520. Compared to Bembo it is somewhat lighter in structure, something particularly true in its digital facsimile. Penguin often used it for headings and titles of 'classic' editions, particularly its capitals and italic; its lower-case does not so effectively harmonise with Bembo due to the different letter shapes such as the tilted 'e'. Although Bembo went on to dominate British book printing in

5310-497: The 1530s onwards. Often lighter on the page and made in larger sizes than had been used for roman type before, French Garalde faces rapidly spread throughout Europe from the 1530s to become an international standard. Also during this period, italic type evolved from a quite separate genre of type, intended for informal uses such as poetry, into taking a secondary role for emphasis. Italics moved from being conceived as separate designs and proportions to being able to be fitted into

5428-405: The 1920s that its influence may have been due to the high quality of printing shown in the original De Aetna volume, perhaps created as a small pilot project . De Aetna was printed using a mixture of alternate characters, perhaps as an experiment, which included a lower-case p in the same style as the capital letter with a flat top. In 1499, Griffo recut the capitals, changing the appearance of

5546-572: The 1920s. Bembo's original working name was "Poliphilus Modernised". Poliphilus is named after the book Hypnerotomachia Poliphili , one of Manutius's most famous books in the Latin alphabet, which was printed with the same roman as De Aetna but recut capitals; it was made for the Medici Society, who planned to create an English translation. Blado is named after the printer Antonio Blado, a colleague of Arrighi. Morison preferred Bembo's roman and

5664-407: The 1980s by word processors and general-purpose computers. Serif Serif typefaces can be broadly classified into one of four subgroups: § old style , § transitional , § Didone and § Slab Serif , in order of first appearance. Some Old-style typefaces can be classified further into one of two subgroups: § Antiqua and § Dutch Taste . Serifs originated from

5782-500: The 9 pt metal drawings, creating a font with different proportions to the metal type in the point sizes at which Bembo was most often used in books; Sebastian Carter has pointed particularly to the 'M' being drawn too wide. This made the proportions of the digital font appear wrong, failing to match the subtlety of the metal type and phototypesetting release, which was released in three different optical sizes for different print sizes. Future Monotype executive Akira Kobayashi commented that

5900-494: The Didone fonts that followed. Stress is more likely to be vertical, and often the "R" has a curled tail. The ends of many strokes are marked not by blunt or angled serifs but by ball terminals . Transitional faces often have an italic 'h' that opens outwards at bottom right. Because the genre bridges styles, it is difficult to define where the genre starts and ends. Many of the most popular transitional designs are later creations in

6018-493: The Fairbank design "looked its best when given sole possession of the page". Fairbank later complained that he had not been told that his italic was intended to be a complementary design, and that he would have designed it differently if he had been. As was normal in metal type fonts of the period from Monotype and other companies, the font was drawn differently at different sizes by modifying Griffo's original single-size design,

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6136-644: The SIL OFL. XETBook then was further developed into ETbb by Michael Sharpe, which is available under the LaTeX Project Public License on CTAN . In this font name, the letters bb are the canonical abbreviation for Bembo under the Berry naming scheme for fonts, as devised by Karl Berry. Heathrow and other British airports used a highly divergent adaptation of Bembo for many years. Designed by Shelley Winters and named BAA Bembo or BAA Sign, it

6254-666: The West. In Mainland China, the most popular category of serifed-like typefaces for body text is called Song ( 宋体 , Songti ); in Japan, the most popular serif style is called Minchō ( 明朝 ) ; and in Taiwan and Hong Kong, it is called Ming ( 明體 , Mingti ). The names of these lettering styles come from the Song and Ming dynasties, when block printing flourished in China. Because

6372-403: The alternate shorter R for better-spaced body text. Monotype's original, early digitisation of Bembo was widely seen as unsuccessful. Two main problems have been cited with it: being digitised from drawings, it was much lighter in type colour than the original metal type which gained weight through ink spread, much reduced on modern printing equipment. In addition, the digital Bembo was based on

6490-526: The appeal of the Aldine face in his commentary that "Griffo...rid himself of the influence of the characteristic round forms of letters written with a pen; he developed instead a more narrow and it might be said a more modern form, which was better suited to [engraving]...whereas Jenson's style made a strong appeal to the sense of beauty prevalent in the period of Art Nouveau , today our taste in architecture and typography inclines towards simpler and more disciplined forms." Bembo's development took place following

6608-553: The arrival of the Arts and Crafts movement . In 1500, Manutius released the first books printed using italic type , again designed by Griffo. This was originally not intended as a complementary design, as is used today, but rather as an alternative, more informal typeface suitable for small volumes. Bembo's italic is not based directly on the work of Griffo, but on the work of calligrapher and handwriting teacher Giovanni Antonio Tagliente (sometimes written Giovannantonio ). He published

6726-426: The art of calligraphy . This led to a general interest in typography and the history of letter forms during her college years. This interest did not translate into a print-related apprenticeship because she said that "the printing trade is barred to women, on the craftsman level," a fact that had "been true for many centuries". Despite the prejudice against women in the trade, she said that in contrast, "anyone who has

6844-408: The book hand humanists dismissed as a gothic hand or the everyday chancery hand . One of the main characteristics that distinguished Griffo's work from most of the earlier "Venetian" tradition of roman type by Nicolas Jenson and others is the now-normal horizontal cross-stroke of the "e", a letterform which Manutius popularised. Modern font designer Robert Slimbach has described Griffo's work as

6962-480: The calligrapher Alfred Fairbank a nearly upright italic design based on the work of Arrighi, and considered using it as Bembo's companion italic before deciding it was too eccentric for this purpose. Monotype ultimately created a more conventional design influenced by Tagliente's typeface and sold Fairbank's design as Bembo Condensed Italic. It was digitised as "Fairbank" in 2003, and sold independently of Monotype's Bembo digitisations. Morison conceded in his memoir that

7080-488: The clear, bold nature of the large serifs, slab serif designs are often used for posters and in small print. Many monospace fonts , on which all characters occupy the same amount of horizontal space as in a typewriter , are slab-serif designs. While not always purely slab-serif designs, many fonts intended for newspaper use have large slab-like serifs for clearer reading on poor-quality paper. Many early slab-serif types, being intended for posters, only come in bold styles with

7198-468: The craft of typography with the concerns of business were not always welcome, even within Monotype. She exchanged many heated letters with Eric Gill about the nature of this relationship, with Gill denigrating the use of promotional materials to sell his designs. Warde defended her position by arguing, as one historian notes, "that mass culture would be elevated and the public good achieved when artists came to accept their social responsibility, and to regard

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7316-447: The cross stroke is angled, not horizontal; an "M" with two-way serifs; and often a relatively dark colour on the page. In modern times, that of Nicolas Jenson has been the most admired, with many revivals. Garaldes, which tend to feature a level cross-stroke on the "e", descend from an influential 1495 font cut by engraver Francesco Griffo for printer Aldus Manutius , which became the inspiration for many typefaces cut in France from

7434-610: The design that "John Gambell, the Yale University printer who initiated and ran the project, also liked the idea of an Aldine face ... Monotype Bembo had been used for University printing at an earlier time, so there was a useful precedent." It is available exclusively to "Yale students, employees, and authorized contractors for use in Yale publications and communications. It may not be used for personal or business purposes, and it may not be distributed to non-Yale personnel." In

7552-474: The difference can be offset by careful setting". Sans-serif are considered to be more legible on computer screens. According to Alex Poole, "we should accept that most reasonably designed typefaces in mainstream use will be equally legible". A study suggested that serif fonts are more legible on a screen but are not generally preferred to sans serif fonts. Another study indicated that comprehension times for individual words are slightly faster when written in

7670-545: The earlier "modernised old styles" have been described as transitional in design. Later 18th-century transitional typefaces in Britain begin to show influences of Didone typefaces from Europe, described below, and the two genres blur, especially in type intended for body text; Bell is an example of this. Didone, or modern, serif typefaces, which first emerged in the late 18th century, are characterized by extreme contrast between thick and thin lines. These typefaces have

7788-470: The earliest versions were reduction in the weight of the capitals and alteration of the 'G' by adding the conventional right-hand serif, and widening the 'e', and suggests that the numerals of Bembo were based on those Monotype had already developed for the typeface Plantin . In the italic, the expansive ascenders of Tagliente's type were shortened and the curl to the right replaced with more conventional serifs. Monotype also cut italic capitals sloped to match

7906-466: The expectations of contemporary design. An eccentricity of Griffo's first De Aetna capitals was an asymmetrical M that does not seem to have a serif at top right. So odd it has been suggested it may have been the result of faulty casting of type, it was nonetheless often copied in French imitations by Garamond and his contemporaries. The final release of Monotype's revival did not follow this, although it

8024-404: The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Book designer Elizabeth Friedländer drew some rarely-seen swash capitals for Bembo for capital introductions to Churchill's history of the second world war. Monotype had already designed two other types inspired by the same period of Italian printing and calligraphy, the roman Poliphilus and italic Blado (both 1923). Made more eccentric and irregular than

8142-615: The first official Greek writings on stone and in Latin alphabet with inscriptional lettering —words carved into stone in Roman antiquity . The explanation proposed by Father Edward Catich in his 1968 book The Origin of the Serif is now broadly but not universally accepted: the Roman letter outlines were first painted onto stone, and the stone carvers followed the brush marks, which flared at stroke ends and corners, creating serifs. Another theory

8260-657: The forces of advertising as a means to achieve their ends, not the defeat of everything". While aesthetically associated with " the new traditionalist " typographic movement, Warde made herself part of a larger campaign to raise the standards of commercial publishing by advocating "for the role of design in good management". She often visited printing schools, universities, and factories both in England and abroad to bring this message. During an invitation to speak in Australia, she spoke for cultivating "a print-conscious public" as

8378-777: The goals of business. With the tenet of readability being a key benefit of good typography, Warde worked with Eric Gill to launch and promote Gill Sans . Warde penned her famous broadside "This is a Printing Office", to show the Perpetua typeface off. It has since been found on the walls of numerous printing offices and has been cast in bronze and is mounted at the entrance to the United States Government Publishing Office in Washington, D.C.; it has been translated into numerous languages and has been parodied. Warde's approach of connecting

8496-427: The hot metal type era Monotype also issued a titling version of Centaur, which was often used by Penguin; Monotype's digitisations of Centaur do not include it. Bembo has been very popular in book publishing, particularly in Britain. It was also recommended by HMSO in its style guide for outsourced printing jobs. Cambridge University Press 's history describes Bembo as one of its most commonly used typefaces; Morison

8614-418: The key differentiation being width, and often have no lower-case letters at all. Examples of slab-serif typefaces include Clarendon , Rockwell , Archer , Courier , Excelsior , TheSerif , and Zilla Slab . FF Meta Serif and Guardian Egyptian are examples of newspaper and small print-oriented typefaces with some slab-serif characteristics, often most visible in the bold weights. In the late 20th century,

8732-446: The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a return to the designs of Renaissance printers and type-founders, many of whose names and designs are still used today. Old-style type is characterized by a lack of large differences between thick and thin lines (low line contrast) and generally, but less often, by a diagonal stress (the thinnest parts of letters are at an angle rather than at the top and bottom). An old-style font normally has

8850-528: The lower-case, whereas in the Renaissance italics were used with upright capital letters in the Roman inscriptional tradition. The bold (Monotype's invention, since Griffo and his contemporaries did not use bold type) is extremely solid, providing a very clear contrast to the regular styles, and Monotype also added lining (upper-case height) figures as well as the text figures (at lower-case height) used in

8968-417: The main form of the letter. The ascenders reach above the cap height . In metal type, Bembo includes two capital "R"s, one with a long, extended leg following Griffo's original engraving, and another with a more tucked-in leg for body text if a printer preferred it. Bembo does not attempt to strictly copy all the features of Renaissance printing, instead blending them with a twentieth-century sensibility and

9086-475: The main glyph, strongly altering appearance of the glyph. Consequently, it is sometimes advised to use sans-serif fonts for content meant to be displayed on screens, as they scale better for low resolutions. Indeed, most web pages employ sans-serif type. Recent introduction of desktop displays with 300+ dpi resolution might eventually make this recommendation obsolete. As serifs originated in inscription, they are generally not used in handwriting. A common exception

9204-423: The matrices used to cast the type, printers could use a wider range of fonts and there was increasing demand for varied typefaces. Artistically, meanwhile, the preference for using mechanical, geometric Didone and “modernised old style” fonts introduced in the nineteenth century was being displaced by a revival of interest in "true old style" serif fonts developed before this, a change that has proved to be lasting. At

9322-525: The new technology." Oxford University Press editor John Bell also borrowed the name for his set of comic verse lampooning publishing, Mutiny on the Bembo . Monotype has released two separate digitisations named Bembo and more recently Bembo Book, as well as the more slender caps-only display font Bembo Titling and the alternate italic design Fairbank. Bembo Book is considered to be superior by being thicker and more suitable for body text, as well as for offering

9440-681: The ordinary" in this usage, as in art 'grotesque' usually means "elaborately decorated". Other synonyms include "Doric" and "Gothic", commonly used for Japanese Gothic typefaces . Old-style typefaces date back to 1465, shortly after Johannes Gutenberg 's adoption of the movable type printing press . Early printers in Italy created types that broke with Gutenberg's blackletter printing, creating upright and later italic styles inspired by Renaissance calligraphy. Old-style serif fonts have remained popular for setting body text because of their organic appearance and excellent readability on rough book paper. The increasing interest in early printing during

9558-559: The original digitisation was "a kind of compromise ... the types that were originally designed for hot-metal often looked too light and feeble ... Bembo Book is more or less what I expected." While Bembo Book is considered the superior digitisation, the original continues to offer the advantages of two extra weights (semi- and extra-bold) and infant styles with simplified a and g characters resembling handwriting; its lighter appearance may also be of use on printing equipment with greater ink spread. Cross-licensing has meant that it

9676-555: The paper retains the detail of their high contrast well, and for whose image a crisp, "European" design of type may be considered appropriate. They are used more often for general-purpose body text, such as book printing, in Europe. They remain popular in the printing of Greek, as the Didot family were among the first to establish a printing press in newly independent Greece. The period of Didone types' greatest popularity coincided with

9794-527: The part-time post of editor of the Monotype Recorder, and Warde accepted—to the astonishment of Lanston Monotype Corporation executives in London, who were expecting a man. She was promoted to publicity manager in about 1929, a post she retained until her retirement in 1960 on her 60th birthday. She thought of herself as an outsider, working in a man's world, but she gained respect for her work and her personal qualities. During her time there, she

9912-530: The past, which Monotype specialised in reviving, and the work of contemporary typeface designers. Born in New York, Warde was the only daughter of May Lamberton Becker , a journalist on the staff of the New York Herald Tribune , and Gustave Becker, composer and teacher. Warde was educated at Barnard College at Columbia University . At the age of thirteen her school introduced her to

10030-576: The period. The characters were drawn on paper in large plan diagrams by the highly experienced drawing office team, led and trained by American engineer Frank Hinman Pierpont and Fritz Stelzer, both of whom Monotype had recruited from the German printing industry. The drawing staff who executed the design was disproportionately female and in many cases recruited from the local area and the nearby Reigate art school. From these drawings, Benton -pantographs were used to machine metal punches to stamp matrices. It

10148-422: The period. The main reasons for his admiration were the balance of the letter construction, such as the evenness of the 'e' with a level cross-stroke and the way the capitals were made slightly lower than the ascenders of the tallest lower-case letters. He described the Aldine roman as "inspired not by writing, but by engraving; not script but sculpture." His friend printer Giovanni Mardersteig similarly suggested

10266-484: The phototypesetting period under alternate names; for example one unofficial phototypesetting version was named " Biretta " after the hat worn by Roman Catholic clergy, and another by Erhard Kaiser was created for the East German printing concern Typoart, outside the reach of Western intellectual property laws. In the digital period, Rubicon created a version named "Bentley" intended for small sizes and Bitstream made

10384-475: The pre-digital period, IBM offered Aldine, a font inspired by Bembo, as a font for the IBM Composer . This was an ultra-premium electric golfball typewriter system, intended for producing copy to be photographically enlarged for small-scale printing projects, or for high-quality office documents. Ultimately the system proved a transitional product, as it was displaced by cheaper phototypesetting, and then in

10502-428: The printed word, gives no obstruction to the presentation of its content, the text. Warde poses a choice between two wine glasses: one of "solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns" and one of "crystal-clear glass." Now the man who first chose glass instead of clay or metal to hold his wine was a " modernist " in the sense in which I am going to use that term. That is, the first he asked of this particular object

10620-576: The printing trade. Her work has been continually referred to within discussions on graphic design and typography, for example during the 1990s "legibility wars" or debates concerning electronic interface design. In 2010, an archive relating to her life and work was established at the Cadbury Research Library , University of Birmingham. The Type Directors Club and Monotype offer a scholarship under her name for young women who demonstrate exceptional talent, sophistication, and skill in

10738-421: The rapid spread of printed posters and commercial ephemera and the arrival of bold type . As a result, many Didone typefaces are among the earliest designed for "display" use, with an ultra-bold " fat face " style becoming a common sub-genre. Slab serif typefaces date to about 1817. Originally intended as attention-grabbing designs for posters, they have very thick serifs, which tend to be as thick as

10856-683: The same line as roman type with a design complementary to it. Examples of contemporary Garalde old-style typefaces are Bembo , Garamond , Galliard , Granjon , Goudy Old Style , Minion , Palatino , Renard, Sabon , and Scala . Contemporary typefaces with Venetian old style characteristics include Cloister , Adobe Jenson , the Golden Type , Hightower Text , Centaur , Goudy's Italian Old Style and Berkeley Old Style and ITC Legacy. Several of these blend in Garalde influences to fit modern expectations, especially placing single-sided serifs on

10974-524: The same style. Fonts from the original period of transitional typefaces include early on the " romain du roi " in France, then the work of Pierre Simon Fournier in France, Fleischman and Rosart in the Low Countries, Pradell in Spain and John Baskerville and Bulmer in England. Among more recent designs, Times New Roman (1932), Perpetua , Plantin , Mrs. Eaves , Freight Text , and

11092-431: The same time, hot metal typesetting had imposed new restrictions: in Monotype's system (while less restrictive than Linotype's), in order to mechanically count the number of characters that could be fitted on a line, letters could only be certain widths, and care was needed to produce letters that looked harmonious in spite of this. Morison was interested in the history of the 15th century Italian printing, and had discussed

11210-566: The serifs are called either yǒujiǎotǐ ( 有脚体 , lit. "forms with legs") or yǒuchènxiàntǐ ( 有衬线体 , lit. "forms with ornamental lines"). The other common East Asian style of type is called black ( 黑体/體 , Hēitǐ ) in Chinese and Gothic ( ゴシック体 , Goshikku-tai ) in Japanese. This group is characterized by lines of even thickness for each stroke, the equivalent of "sans serif". This style, first introduced on newspaper headlines,

11328-406: The sleek lines of Bembo to evoke the feel of antique printing, these remained in Monotype's catalogue and have been digitised, but are much less known today. Bembo can therefore be seen as an iteration of a preexisting design concept towards mass market appeal, taking the basic idea of the Griffo design and (unlike Poliphilus) updating its appearance to match the more sophisticated printing possible by

11446-472: The stroke. In italic, the k has an elegantly curved stroke in the lower-right and descenders on the p , q and y end with a flat horizontal stroke. In the 1950s, Monotype noted that its features included: "serifs fine slab, fine-bracketed and in l.c. prolonged to right along baseline." This meant that many of the serifs (especially the horizontals, for example on the W ) are fine lines of quite uniform width, rather than forming an obvious curve leading into

11564-623: The term "humanist slab-serif" has been applied to typefaces such as Chaparral , Caecilia and Tisa, with strong serifs but an outline structure with some influence of old-style serif typefaces. During the 19th century, genres of serif type besides conventional body text faces proliferated. These included "Tuscan" faces, with ornamental, decorative ends to the strokes rather than serifs, and "Latin" or "wedge-serif" faces, with pointed serifs, which were particularly popular in France and other parts of Europe including for signage applications such as business cards or shop fronts. Well-known typefaces in

11682-525: The topic with his correspondent, the printer Giovanni Mardersteig, in correspondence with whom he wrote a series of letters discussing Bembo's development. He also discussed the project in his letters with the Poet Laureate Robert Bridges , who had some interest in printing. For the project Morison bought a copy of De Aetna which he then sold to Monotype as a model. Bembo's technical production followed Monotype's standard method of

11800-651: The tops and bottoms of some letters, the O and Q excepted, at the beginning or end, and sometimes at each, of all". The standard also proposed that 'surripsis' may be a Greek word derived from σῠν- ( 'syn-' , "together") and ῥῖψῐς ( 'rhîpsis' , "projection"). In 1827, Greek scholar Julian Hibbert printed with his own experimental uncial Greek types, remarking that the types of Giambattista Bodoni 's Callimachus were "ornamented (or rather disfigured) by additions of what [he] believe[s] type-founders call syrifs or cerefs". The printer Thomas Curson Hansard referred to them as "ceriphs" in 1825. The oldest citations in

11918-563: The twentieth century, in the words of John Dreyfus "Morison was not entirely satisfied by the way Griffo's roman had been recut", feeling that "the real charm of the original had not been brought out in the mechanical recutting". His friend printer Giovanni Mardersteig made two attempts at designing an alternative revival for use in his fine printing house, the Officina Bodoni, first in discussion with Morison and cut by hand by punchcutter Charles Malin , who some years later had also cut

12036-435: The typeface slightly. This version was used to print Manutius' famous illustrated volume Hypnerotomachia Poliphili . Griffo's roman typeface, with several replacements of the capitals, continued to be used by Manutius's company until the 1550s, when a refresh of its equipment brought in French typefaces which had been created by Garamond, Pierre Haultin and Robert Granjon under its influence. UCLA curators, who maintain

12154-459: The use of typography. The Beatrice Warde scholarship emphasizes the merging of technology and typography, as she used to encourage the best use of technology in design. In 1922, Beatrice married Frederic Warde , printer to Princeton University and a typographic designer. After moving to Europe in 1925, their marriage ended in separation in November 1926, followed by divorce in 1938. Although it

12272-459: The vertical lines themselves. Slab serif fonts vary considerably: some such as Rockwell have a geometric design with minimal variation in stroke width—they are sometimes described as sans-serif fonts with added serifs. Others such as those of the "Clarendon" model have a structure more like most other serif fonts, though with larger and more obvious serifs. These designs may have bracketed serifs that increase width along their length. Because of

12390-459: Was Monotype's standard practice at the time to first engrave a limited number of characters and print proofs from them to test overall balance of colour on the page, before completing the remaining characters. Monotype's publicity team described the final italic as "fine, tranquil" in a 1931 showing, emphasising their desire to avoid a design that seemed too eccentric. It was, however, not the only design considered. Morison initially commissioned from

12508-433: Was a more eccentric revival of the Aldine face than Bembo, it did not attract as much popularity. Monotype created several titling designs based on Renaissance printing that could be considered complementary to Bembo: Bembo Titling (based directly on Bembo's capitals, but more delicate to suit a larger text size) and the more geometric Felix Titling in 1934, inspired by humanist capitals drawn by Felice Feliciano in 1463. In

12626-402: Was a short 60-page text about a journey to Mount Etna , written by the young Italian humanist poet Pietro Bembo , who would later become a Cardinal , secretary to Pope Leo X and lover of Lucrezia Borgia . Griffo was one of the first punchcutters to fully express the character of the humanist hand that contemporaries preferred for manuscripts of classics and literary texts, in distinction to

12744-518: Was a twentieth-century writer and scholar of typography . As a marketing manager for the British Monotype Corporation , she was influential in the development of printing tastes in Britain and elsewhere in the mid-twentieth century and was recognized at the time as "[o]ne of the few women typographers in the world". Her writing advocated higher standards in printing, and championed intelligent use of historic typefaces from

12862-573: Was an engraver who created designs by cutting punches in steel. These were used as a master to stamp matrices , the moulds used to cast metal type . Manutius at first printed works only in Greek . His first printing in the Latin alphabet , in February 1496 (1495 by the Venetian calendar ), was a book entitled Petri Bembi de Aetna Angelum Chabrielem liber . This book, usually now called De Aetna ,

12980-458: Was available by special order. Monotype also did not copy the curving capital Y used by Manutius in the tradition of the Greek letter upsilon which had been used in some versions of Poliphilus and Blado, although not in the digitisation of Poliphilus. Nesbitt has described the capitals as "a composite design in the spirit of [Griffo's] type". Historian James Mosley reports that other changes from

13098-477: Was closely connected to Cambridge and his personal archive (as well as much of Monotype's) went to the university after his death. Among reviews of typefaces, writing in the anthology Typographic Specimens: The Great Typefaces, Jeff Price commented that Bembo became noted for its ability to "provide a text that is extremely consistent in colour", helping it to "remain one of the most popular book types since its release". Roger Black commented in 1983 "For me, Bembo

13216-738: Was in London with the new Monotype Composing Machine., Warde moved to Europe in 1925. Beatrice Warde spent time investigating the origins of the Garamond design of type, and published the results in The Fleuron in 1926 under the pen-name "Paul Beaujon". Her conclusion that many typefaces previously attributed to Claude Garamond were in fact made ninety years later by Jean Jannon was a lasting contribution to scholarship. Warde later recalled she had amused herself imagining her 'Paul Beaujon' persona to be "a man of long grey beard, four grandchildren,

13334-486: Was not "How should it look?" but "What must it do?" and to that extent all good typography is modernist. Throughout the essay, Warde argues for the discipline and humility required to create quietly set, "transparent" book pages. Warde's success as a design communicator has placed much of her work, like The Crystal Goblet , within the canon of graphic design and typography history. She had, as one historian has noted, "the popular touch" which connected printing education with

13452-410: Was published again and reached its widest audience yet in a book called The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography. Typically, design historians associate Stanley Morison as the source of "new traditionalist" ideas and "credit Beatrice Warde with spreading his influence. "The Crystal Goblet" is rich with metaphors. The title itself is a reference to a clear vessel holding wine, where the vessel,

13570-438: Was responsible for planning the advertising and marketing activities for Monotype's new and widely acclaimed products. Working with Morison, Warde produced materials and lectures that connected British nationalist sentiment to the visual identity of corporations and functionalist views of efficiency. This kind of promotional activity aligned the political and public intentions of Jan Tschichold 's New, or Modern typography , with

13688-535: Was somewhat dismissive of Poliphilus. Unlike Bembo, both in metal featured a Greek-influenced Y with a curving head, as in the original. Monotype licensed and released the font Centaur around the same time as Bembo. It was drawn by the American book designer Bruce Rogers . Its roman is based on a slightly earlier period of Italian renaissance printing than Bembo, the work of Nicolas Jenson in Venice around 1470. Like Bembo, its italic (by Frederic Warde ) comes from

13806-460: Was that of Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi , also a calligrapher who became involved in printing. His almost upright italic design was also imitated in France and would also become influential to twentieth-century font designs. Morison continued to be interested in Tagliente's work and late in life curated a book, Splendour of Ornament , on Tagliente's decorative pattern designs. Monotype Bembo

13924-441: Was very bold with a high x-height. The National Gallery in London used Bembo, then its corporate font, as a plan for the carving of its name into its frontage. The Yale face, developed by Matthew Carter as a corporate font for Yale University , is based on Griffo's work; Yale commissioned a custom font from Carter, a member of the university faculty, after being dissatisfied with digital versions of Bembo. Carter commented on

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