Daily Type Specimen

Not all type specimens are pretty. Some typesetting shops were small businesses who could’t afford fancy layouts published as books. But we can look at their specimens and be reminded that type is just as functional as it is pretty.

Never forget that designers were once stuck with the squares, dots, and stars that a type shop had in stock.

Caslon 540 was a version of Caslon with descenders shortened to fit on a standard line. It was released by ATF in response to a similar design by Inland.

This is a rather ugly fraktur type specimen from Hamilton. The weights of the letters are inconsistent—just look at “Movable” in the first line. The routing is inconsistent across sizes—just look at how a changes across the three sizes. I’m not sure if that means they used multiple patterns or just didn’t care about the quality in 1884. And that five looks like it was carved by hand!

This was engraved in 1854 for George Becker’s letting manual.

Contemporary digital agates include Retina by Tobias Frere Jones and Trench Sans by India Type Foundry.

Pete Dombrezian designed Dom Casual. It was intended for use as a photo typesetting font, but was released as metal type in 1952.

Lucian Bernhard’s classic Bernhard Gothic was released by ATF in 1929 and 1930. Bernhard gothic was designed to cash in on Futura’s fame, much like the flood of Brandon Grotesque knockoffs that now appear weekly. Except Bernhard worked a great deal of originality into his work.