Thursday, September 16, 2010

The "Five" Classic Typefaces

The Five classic Typefaces are: Garamond (France)-Old Style , Baskerville (England)-Transitional, Bodoni (Italy)-Modern, Century Expanded (U.S)-Egyptian, and Helvetica (Switzerland)-Sans Serif. Each of these type faces represents a distinct stage in the evolution of type design. They remain amongst the most popular and widely used typefaces today in the graphic world.

Garamond (1615): Claude Garamond was originally credited with the design of this elegant French typeface. Instead of trying to make type look like writing, Claude allowed the metal to dictate the letterforms. This old style font is known for its relatively thick strokes and heavily bracketed serifs and oblique stress. I notice the letterforms are open and rounded, making this font extremely readable.

Baskerville (1757): This elegant, well-designed typeface was created by the Englishman John Baskerville. This transitional typeface shows greater contrast between the thicks and thins. Serifs are noticeably less heavily bracketed, and the stress is in a away vertical. Baskerville is considered one of the most pleasant and readable typefaces. I seem to notice Baskerville is a wide, rounded letterform with more sculpted serifs.

Bodoni (1788): Italian Designer, Giambattista Bodini created this Modern typeface with further reduced thin strokes and serifs, to fine hairlines and virtually eliminated the brackets all together. I notice it has a strong verticle stress with blunt shaped feet, and a smaller x-height, which creates a more elegant typeface.

Century Expanded (1894): This egyptian or slab serif typeface was created by American designer Linn Boyd Benton. This font is famous for its thick-slabbed serifs and thick main strokes, with very little contrast between the thicks and thins. I notice this font is a much more bold, extended and at the same time condensed, decorative typeface. The heavy slab serifs are lighter in weight and modified by the addition of brackets.

Helvetica (1957) This sans serif typeface is of Swiss origin, and created by Max Miedinger with Edward Hoffmann. Helvetica has a large x-height, slightly condensed letters, and a relatively less stress with equal strokes and is always leaded. I find this font to be the most clean cut, readable font out there. Today, Sans serif fonts are most commonly used for text and display.



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