FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofH E LV E T I C A

A traditional font in the nineteenth - century style, Helvetica was designed by Max Miedinger in 1957 for the Haas Foundry in Basel, Switzerland. Miedinger took the Berthold Akzidenz standard

family of the beginning of the century, which was extremely popular among Swiss typographers and polished it

up. Helvetica is now one of the most widely used type families, especially for computer applications and operating systems. Its clear and concise letterforms are flexible at any size and make it ideal for a variety of communication forms.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofA V E N I R

Avenir is intended to be nothing more or less than a clear and clean representation of modern typographical trends, giving the designer a typeface which is strictly modern and at the

same time human. Suitable for use in texts of any length. Released in 1988 by Linotype - Hell, Avenir was inspired by Erbar and

Futura, two preexsting sans serif typefaces. While the weights of these three fonts are similar, Avenir is unique in that each of its varieties is designed for a different purpose. The result: A versatile yet consistent type for a range of printing conditions.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofBELL CENTENNIAL

Designed by Matthew Carter in 1978 for the AT&T corporation, Bell centennial marked the company’s one hundredth anniversary. A textbook example of highly skilled if conspicuous type

design, Bell Centennial evolved from the earlier Bell Gothic, designed by Mergenthaler Linotype’s Chauncey H

Griffith. Bell Gothic was used in American telephone directories until the 1970’s, when new printing technology compromised its legibility. Carter rendered Bell Centennial more legible and in the process, according to desinger Gunnlaugur Briem, he “created a bulletproof rhinoceros that could dance Swan Lake.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofFRANKLIN GOTHIC

Argably the most widely used font ever produced, Franklin Gothic was designed by Morris Fuller Benton between 1903 and 1912 for American Type Founders Company. Because of its steady popularity, the typeface was updated in 1979 for ITC by Vic Caruso. This new version included

more weights and became the standard choice for newspapers and advertising. The original font takes it name from Benjamin Franklin.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofFRUTIGER

An efficient but cheerful typeface, Frutiger embodies a unique timelessness. Its origin stem from the redesign of France’s Charles de Gaulle Airport. The airport owners wanted a new signage system that would complement the airport’s architectural overhaul. Swiss designer Adrian

Frutiger of the French foundry Deberny & Peignot designed such a complementary font, the eponymous Frutiger, in 1976. Frutiger’s clean, robust sans serif design still offers a relaxed appearance ideal for the juxtaposition of words and images.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofFUTURA

Form follows function - it is this Bauhaus design principle that inspired the elegantly geometric sans serif type Futura. The most influential font design of the Bauhaus era, Futura is beautifully utilitarian. Designed in 1927 by Paul Renner, it is a simple geometric font.

Its trademark: long ascenders and descenders. The font barey conforms to the historical shape of the letters; rather, it displays an innate radicalism that stands the test of time.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofGILL SANS

Gill sans represents traditional modernsim at its best. Designed by Eric Gill and first released between 1927 and 1930, this sans serif is a stronger version of an earlier typeface designed for the London Underground by Gill’s friend and teacher Edward Johnston.

Gill sans features classical proportions that are highly legible in text and display work. With its heritage in pen - written letters, Gill Sans marks a return to old forms as the basis for a twentieth-century alphabet and is classified as a humanist sans serif.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofMYRIAD

The result of a two year collaboration between designers Carol Twombly and Robert Slimbach. Myriad is a lively sans serif font. Orignally taking aesthetics from Frutiger, it was a popular typeface in the early nineties after it was released in 1992 by Adobe.

Myriad replaced Apple’s corporate font Garamond in early 2000. It is now used as Apple’s primary font for marketing materials.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofTRADE GOTHIC

Once an ideal font for newspapers, Trade Gothic is now primarily used in advertising and multimedia presentations. Its history can be directly traced back to German grotesque forms an the development of News Gothic by Morris Fuller Benton in 1908.

Between 1948 and 1960, Linotype commissioned Jackson Burke to create a more readble and modern newspaper font, and Trade Gothic was born.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofUNIVERS

Revolutionary in its design and form, univers is a family of twenty-one typestyles designed by Adrian Frutiger. Its wight, proportion and angle are all orchestrated in a unified family that is distinguished by numbers. Univers 55 is the parent face, the basis from which each variation was devolped. All twenty-one faces can be used together in various ways. The design of Univers sparked a trend in type design toward a lerger x-height.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofBEMBO

The oldest of the old-style typefaces, Bembo was inspired by Classical writer Pietro Bembo in 1496. The font was first developed by printer Aldus Manutius. He used a new weight of a roman face to print Bembo’s short piece ‘De Aetna’. Bembo soon eveloved into the standard text type in Europe and was used this way for over two hundred years. Later modified in 1929 by Stanley Morison for the Monotype Corporation in London, Bembo is a mature typeface with a rich history. It lends a classical feel to any application.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofBODONI

Developed by Giambattista Bodoni during the Classical period (1760-1810). Bodoni is a elegant and precise font, with its strong characters and thich and thin strokes it is easily recognisable.

One of the most popular typefaces until the mid nineteenth century, Bodoni still inspires innovation, A modern example,

Bauer Bodoni, designed by Heinrich Jost in 1926 for the Bauer Font Foundry, features forms closely related to the original but with even more delicacy. The version of Bodoni that is used today was created between 1908 and 1915 by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type foundrers Company.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofCLARENDON

The most revealing characteristic of Clarendon is its bracketed serifs, making it a striking contrast to typical serif designs. First issued in 1845 by the Fann St. Foundry in England, Clarendon has evolved through redesignd by Herman Eidenbenz in 1953 and Albert Kapf in 1965. Clarendon is still used frequently in dictionaries and headlines. With concise and enduring forms, Clarendonmaintains a modern sensibility.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofCOURIER

Though the typewriter is no longer in use within an office, the typewriter style font Courier still remains a viable typeface for advertisments in the twenty-first century. IBM first commissioned Howard

Kettler to design the typeface for use in typewriters in the 1950’s. The Hollywood standard for all screenplays, Courier’s digital

version recollects the vernacular of the era of the manual typewriter. The font was also the US State Department’s standard typeface untill January 2004, when it was replaced with Times New Roman. As a monospaced font, Courier has recently found renewed use in the electronic world in situations where columns of characters must be consistently aligned.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory of

LUCIDA

Built for bitmapped display screens and laser printing, Lucida was one of the first of the super family typefaces. Over fifty designs and variations of this font were created between 1984 and 1995 by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes of Bigelow and Holmes.

Lucida is a sturdy font, ideal for difficult printing conditions and small point sizes

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofMINION

A modern classic, Minion was designed by Robert Slimback in 1990 for Adobe. Highly legible and beautiful, this font was inspired by late Renaissance faces. A gorgeous and utilitarian typeface, it has both simplicity of conventional type with a digital aspect built

in. Minion is suitable for a variety of uses; special-edition books, newspapers and packaging. It is available in black weight, display and swash fonts.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofPERPETUA

Once claiming that typography was ‘not his country’, Eric Gill later refuted this claim by creating his most successful roman typeface, Perpetua. As Gill was both a sculptor and type designer, it cam as no surprise that Perpetua had a chiseled look.

Released between 1929 and 1930, Perpetua firt appeared in the limited-edition book ‘The Passion aof Perpetua and Felicity’. Today the font still remains an excellent text typeface for long pages of text.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofSTEMPEL SCHNEIDLER

Graced with charm and fine proportions, Stempel Schneidler was inspired by Venetian typefaces from the Renaissance.

It was designed by F.H Ernst Schneidler for the Bauer Foundry in 1936.

It is a fine legible text type that is also useful for display text.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofTIMES NEW ROMAN

A workhouse typeface, Times New Roman was designed in 1932 by Stanley Morison, a type consultant for the Times of London. “The new types for the Times will tend towards the ‘modern,’ though the body of the letter will be more or less old-face in appearance,” he wrote in a memo

to the times committee. Morison achieved his goal - this modern newspaper face was the most successful type of its century and became present in the next. It offers great contrast and is more condensed than typical newspaper fonts.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory of

TRAJAN

The models for this elegant and classical typeface were the letterforms used on the imperial arches (arch of Titus, Rome, 81AD). To document cultural events and wars. Trajan was designed by Carol Twombly for Adobe in 1989. It is a pure version of the famous roman letters,

which were written with a brush before being carved into stone. Trajan is used for display work in books, magazines, posters and billboards.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofWALBAUM

Walbaum was seen as the most beautiful specimen of German Modern Face, Justus Erich Walbaum designed the typeface. It is a attractive and verstile font, which can be used across many media formats. Walbaum was ranked as one of the greatest European

Romantic designer, he cut the type at Goslar and Wiemar early in the nineteenth century. The typeface looks similar to Bondoni and Didot with its use of thick and thin strokes within a simple letterform.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofGARAMOND

Claude Garamond a sixteenth century printer/publisher is credited with the design of Garamond, but Jean Jannon also may have been key in its development. A typeface based on the work of

Jean Jannon was introduced at the Paris World’s Fair in 1990 as ‘Original Garamond’. This event incited many type foundries to

cast similar typrfaces, sparking a renewed interest in the re-creation of Garamond that continued throughout the twentieth century. In the early 1990’s, Adobe commissioned Robert Slimbach to redesign the font and Adobe Garamond was born.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofCASLON

The Caslon legacy began in 1725 with the founding of the Caslon Type Foundry in England by William Caslon and lasted for three generations. In 1734, Caslon produced a one

page specimen which displayed forty-seven of his typefaces, including Caslon. Caslon was based on seventeenth-

century Dutch old-style design, which made it popular throughout Europe and it spread to America. Caslon was chosen as the typeface for the first printing of the American Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. In 1990, designer Carol Twombly used the specimen pages of the late Caslon to update the font.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofAKZIDENZ GROTESK

In the 1920’s, Jan Tschichold described sans serif type as ‘a functional style for a rational era’. So it is no surprise that the German typeface Akzidenz (‘trade type’) Grotesk (sans serif) was favoured by

Tschichold and his Bauhaus cohorts for its simplicity. While Akzidenz was orignally featured as a display typeface,

the lowercase would later be used for text. And though some type theorists belive the Akzidenz Grotesk was cut by anonymous punchcutters from the Berthold foundry, this useful font has aso been attributed to German typographer Gunter Gerhand Lange. What we can be sure of is that Akzidenz was ahead of its time, laying the foundation for other innovative fonts such as Univers and Helvetica.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofBELL GOTHIC

The forerunner to Bell Centennial designed by Chauncey H Griffith. It was designed in 1937 for use in American telephone directories. Prior to 1937, telephone books were printed in a variety

of typefaces. Bell Gothic was highly legible which made block of text easily readable and ideal for communicating large amounts of

text on a single page. The font regained popularity in the nineties, with Architectural Record debuting a redesign that prominently featured Bell Gothic in its logo.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofBASKERVILLE

Baskerville is a transitional serif typeface designed in 1757 by John Baskerville. The Baskerville typeface is the result of John Baskerville’s intent to improve upon the types of William Caslon.

He increased the contrast between thick and thin strokes, making the serifs sharper and more tapered, and shifted the

axis of rounded letters to a more vertical position. Baskerville’s typeface was the culmination of a larger series of experiments to improve legibility which also included paper making and ink manufacturing. The result was a typeface that reflected Baskerville’s ideals of perfection, where he chose simplicity and quiet refinement.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofCHELTENHAM

Cheltenham is a display typeface, designed in 1896 by architect Bertram Goodhue and Ingalls Kimball. The original drawings were known as Boston Old Style, which Morris Fuller Benton

developed it into a final design. Cheltenham is not based on a single historical model, and shows influences of the

Arts and Crafts Movement. Originally intended as a text face, “Chelt” became hugely successful as the “king of the display faces.” Part of the faces huge popularity is because, as it has elements of both an old style and transitional face, a Cheltenham headline complements virtually any body type. The overwhelming popularity of the face for display purposes lasted until the advent of the geometric sans-serif typefaces of the 1930s.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofCOPPERPLATE GOTHIC

Copperplate Gothic is a typeface designed by Frederic W. Goudy and released by the American Type Founders (ATF) in 1901. While termed a “Gothic” typeface, it has small glyphic serifs that

act to emphasize the blunt terminus of vertical and horizontal strokes. The typeface shows an unusual combination of

influences; the glyphs are reminiscent of stone carving, the wide horizontal axis is typical of Victorian display types, yet the result is far cleaner and leaves a crisp impression in letterpress or offset printing.The typeface is most often used in stationery, for social printing, and is classically seen acid-etched into glass on the doors of law offices, banks and restaurants.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofSOUVENIR

Souvenir is an old style serif typeface, designed in 1914 by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders. It was loosely based on Schelter Antiqua, a 1905 Art Nouveau type issued by the

J.G. Schelter & Giesecke foundry in Leipsig. It has a much softer look than other old style faces, with a generally

light look, rounded serifs, and very little contrast between thick and thin strokes. At the time of its issue it achieved only a moderate popularity and was known as “the printer’s friend” because of its forgiving qualities on press.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory of

ROCKWELL

Rockwell is a serif typeface belonging to the classification slab serif, where the serifs are unbracketed and similar in weight to the horizontal strokes of the letters. The typeface was designed

at the Monotype foundry’s in-house design studio in 1934. Rockwell is geometric, its upper- and lowercase O more

of a circle than an ellipse. A serif at the apex of uppercase A is distinct. The lowercase a is two-story, somewhat unsuitable for a geometrically drawn typeface.Because of its monoweighted stroke, Rockwell is used primarily for display rather than lengthy bodies of text. Rockwell is based on an earlier, more condensed slab serif design called Litho Antique.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofSYNTAX

Syntax is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by the Swiss typeface designer Hans Eduard Meier in 1968, and released in 1969. It is believed to be the final face designed and released by D.

Stempel for foundry casting. Meier described Syntax as being a sans-serif face modeled on the Renaissance serif typeface,

similar to Bembo. The uppercase has a wide proportion, and the terminals not being parallel to the baseline provide a sense of animation. The lowercase a and g follow the old style model of having two storeys. The italics are a combination of humanist italic forms, seen in the lowercase italic q, and realist obliques, seen in the lowercase italic a, which retains two storeys, unlike in other humanist sans-serif typefaces.

FONT DICTIONARYHistory ofMUSEO

Museo was designed by Jos Buivenga in 2008. It all started with my love for the letter ‘U’. This uppercase letter just came to me as an image in a daydream. The top of both stems bent into semi-

slab serifs. From this principle he worked out the rest of the uppercase letters. The first intention was to make it an all-caps

display font, but after a while, Buivenga changed his mind. Buivenga wanted it to be a bit more versatile, so he decided to add lowercase and adjust spacing and kerning to increase legibility. Besides ligatures, contextual alternatives, stylistic alternates, fractions and proportional/tabular figures, Museo has a ‘case’ feature for case-sensitive forms.

‘The Font Dictionary’

The font dictionary is a resource for you to use to identify different fonts. Through this you will be able to find the first ever typeface made to the latest and read the relevant information about them. This includes when it was designed, the designer, the purpose and the history behind the typeface.We believe that this knowledge is essential to typographers, knowing the history of a font will give you the understanding of why it was made and in what context it designed for, this should inform the way the font should be used. Also knowing when it was made, relates back to the aesthetics of the font and you will understand why it was designed in that way.The Font Dictionary is paired with the publication, this is because we want you to use this as the creative side of typography. The Type Handbook gave you the theory behind everything, now use the Font Dictionary to put this into practice.

‘How to use’The Font Dictionary is an extension to the Type Handbook. From reading the publication you will have learnt all the theory behind the history of typography and the ways in which you can identify a font.Now we want you to put the theory into practice. By using the Font Dictionary you can identify fonts from the first one ever made to the latest. With the knowledge you have now learnt, you will be able to recognise the differences between each font and analyse which would be the best for you to use within your design work.We have given you information on each typeface which can help you identify this also, but doing it yourself is the best way to experiment with these. This is a resource that we want you to use and what we think is useful to you as a designer. Make it interesting; come up with games you could use them for.For instance, pick an information card at random and then produce a piece of design work using this typeface alone. Be creative; find innovating ways to use the Font Dictionary.