![]() ![]() (Something I’ll be writing about in future posts here on Sitepoint). Are the fonts used serif, sans-serif, decorative? The more familiar you become with type, you’ll find that you begin to experiment and you’ll also start to figure out which fonts work well together. Look at the ads when you’re standing at the bus stop. Next time you’re reading a magazine or book, or looking at a website, take time to figure out what kind of font is being used. One way to become more conscious of typefaces is to make an effort to look more closely at type. When you start to look closely though, as well as their similarities, you’ll start to notice the little differences that make each one unique. ![]() You might think that these fonts look almost identical on first glance. Note all of the text below is set at size 80pt and leading of 80pt. ![]() Other well known examples of Old Style fonts include Garamond, Gaudy Old Style, Perpetua and Minion Pro. If you find that’s the case, you could consider using the fonts below for headings and sub-headings. There is an argument that for print-based work serif fonts are the best, while for the web/screen sans-serif fonts are easiest to read. Old Styles don’t jump off the page with any sort of quirkiness and that’s what makes them easy on the eye. They can also work well on the web and two Old Style fonts are considered to be web-safe: Times New Roman and Palatino Linotype. That’s why you’ll find them used heavily in newspapers, magazines and books. A historical classification for typefaces that draws inspiration from Roman lettering and calligraphy to include forms that reference the stroke of a pen. Old Style typefaces are considered to be the best type for large amounts of body text on paper. The very first italic letters were produced with Old Style fonts in the early 1500s. The serifs on Old Styles are always angled and if you draw a line though the thinnest parts of the letters, you’ll see that the stress is diagonal. Unlike Modern typefaces, the thick/thin transition is moderate and not so obvious. Their relation to calligraphy can be seen in the curved strokes and letters with thick to thin transitions, looking somewhat like letters drawn with a pen and ink. Old Style (occasionally referred to as Humanist) typefaces are based on hand lettering of scribes and they first appeared in the late 15th century, before Modern typefaces. I think for all of us, our design work can only improve when we become more aware of the different categories of fonts, their characteristics and similarities, and for what purpose they are most suited, whether we work in web or print design. Nevertheless, it's time for the open source community to have a classical Garamond and I promise, I’ll try hard to learn and give my best.Last week, we had a look at the Modern typeface and to continue this series of posts on font categories, today we’ll take a look at the beautiful Old Style typeface. I know that competition is hard in this field, and these fonts won’t be able to stand up to their commercial counterparts for quite some time. In the world of free software, however, only few Garamond-inspired fonts exist, and as far as I know, none with the scope of EB Garamond. There are indeed lots of excellent Garamond fonts, also such that try to approach the original in the same way as EB Garamond does. Why another Garamond? The Garamonds are probably the most copied typefaces in the world. Hence the name of this project: Egenolff-Berner Garamond. Its design reproduces the original design by Claude Garamont: The source for the letterforms is a scan of a specimen known as the “Berner specimen”, which, composed in 1592 by Conrad Berner, son-in-law of Christian Egenolff and his successor at the Egenolff print office, shows Garamont’s roman and Granjon’s italic fonts at different sizes. EB Garamond is an open source project to create a revival of Claude Garamont’s famous humanist typeface from the mid-16th century. Garamont’s fonts have set a milestone, on which font designers have been recurring ever since. ![]()
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