![]() Roman types are used most today and can be devided into serif, sans serif, ornamental and script types. At the highest level, one can tell the difference between Roman, Gaelic and Blackletter types. ![]() Ottmar Mergenthaler invented the first machine of this type and it was called the Linotype machine.īecause so many typefaces have been created throughout the centuries, they are commonly categorized according to appearance. In the 1980s the mechanization of typesetting allowed automated casting of fonts on the fly as lines of type in the needed size and length. Wood served as the material for some large History of Western Typeface.įonts called wood type throughout the 19th century, mainly in the U.S. It is arguable that the first superfamily was Clearface Gothic for ATF in 1910, created by Morris Fuller Benton.įrom the 1450s up until present day, fonts have been cast in lead alloys by type foundries. Typeface superfamilies began to emerge when foundries began to include typefaces with significant structural differences, but some design relationship, under the same family name. The first “extended” font families, which included a wide range of widths and weights in the same general style emerged in the early 1900s, starting with ATF’s Cheltenham (1902-1913), with an initial design by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, and many additional faces designed by Morris Fuller Benton. The thing that separates a font and a typeface is that a font designates a specific member of a type family such as roman, boldface or italic type, while typeface designates a consistent visual appearance or style which can be a “family” or a related set of fonts. Most font families have several fonts but some can have a few dozen. E.g., Times is a font family, but Times Roman, Times Italic and Times Bold are individual fonts that make up the Times font family. A font family is a group of related fonts with the only variations being in weight, orientation, width, etc., but not design. These are collections of closely related typeface designs that can include hundreds of styles. The design of characters in a font took into account all these factors.Īs the range of typeface designs increased and requirements of publishers broadened over the centuries, fonts of specific weight and stylistic variants have led to font families. Historically, fonts came in specific sizes determining the size of characters, and in quantities of sorts or number of each letter provided. The term refers to the process of casting metal type at a type foundry. Typeoff have an excellent Blackletter resource page.The word font (spelled fount in British English, but pronounced font) derives from Middle French fonte which means something that has been melted a casting. I love typography has a nice article about Moyenage, a blackletter typeface for a modern age.Ĭreative Pro discusses Amador, a new blackletter font. If you’d like to lend a medieval look to your design, there are now a huge number of free blackletter fonts available to download. Other familiar sightings include newspaper nameplates where it may be considered the font lends gravitas to the publication.īlackletters have more recently become associated with beer labels, heavy metal bands, gangsta’ rap and oh, Disneyland. If you’ve received a certificate, diploma or degree there is a strong chance some or all of the text was set in Blackletter. Check out the Eye Magazine article on the meaning of type for more on this topic.Īs already mentioned, these typefaces are not easy to read in body text so they are best used for headings, logos, posters and signs. Some people associate all blackletters as Nazi fonts but this is clearly an uneducated view and wipes out several hundred years of the typefaces’ history. The Nazis continued to use Fraktur extensively until 1941 when it was replace with more readable fonts. ![]() ![]() In 1933 Hitler declared the new typography to be un-German and declared Fraktur to be “Volk”, i.e. In the 1920’s it was considered to be antiquated by German designers and publishers and fell out of favor and was replaced by the “New Typography” of sans serif typefaces. Germany continued to use Blackletters until the early twentieth century. For these reasons, in the 1500’s, blackletter became less popular for printing in many countries except Germany and the German speaking countries. Blackletters are difficult to read as body text and Roman and Italic faces were easier to print with movable type. ![]() While Gutenberg used blackletters for his bible and books, this signaled a new era in typefaces used for printing. Image Credit: Wikipedia (with small change by the author) ![]()
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