#serifs

If you ever want to get beaten up by a bunch of graphic designers, try removing the serifs from Times New Roman and adding them to Comic Sans.

I made a brief start at this last week but I’m going to jump in and try to do more of it this week. SO I started off going through a list on FontShop (Top fonts of All Time)

“2. Make a list of fonts that appeal to you. Not what’s popular, what makes your art brain go brrrrr.” 

Apparently, in this instance, we take screenshots of the fonts that make the brain go brr. (Total fonts so far: 11)

So I guess now it’s time to have a look at some other sources/libraries. 

Gut feel places to check out:

Google Fonts (They’re free/open-sourced, and there’s a reasonable library)

Adobe Fonts (Not super thrilled but I do have access to them at work and at home. Let’s see what’s in their arsenal that’s of use)

MyFonts (Big type repository; this might be a good place to start finding/narrowing down smaller font foundries that produce fonts you’d like to support)

Monotype (Big type foundry, worth checking to see what’s in their vast libraries that appeals)

And then! Of course! I can’t leave out the books.

Retro Fonts by Gregor Stawinski (published by Lawrence King)

The Visual History  of Type by Paul McNeil (also published by Lawrence King)

10 October 2022 | Oak Hill Cemetery, Black Earth, Dane County, Wisconsin

Eric Gill’s second edition of his book, An Essay on Typography, was published in 1936 and is part of our Leuba Collection. His specific theme is “typography as it is affected by the conditions of the year 1931.” What he means by that is in 1931 the clash between industrialism and handcrafting methods was coming to a head in the world of presses and printing. Gill’s book offers principles on “the making of letters and the making of books” in order to emphasize the fluidity of the alphabet as we know it.

Many of the seemingly inexplicable standards we have for alphabet letters today come from the history of the physical methods of writing, especially the change to writing on paper. For example, “upper case” letters and “lower case” letters were once one and the same. Gill demonstrates how the Roman letter “A” evolved into “a.” The reason for this is that the two strokes of “a” were easier and faster to write on paper than the three-stroke “A.”

Another case he brings to our attention is that of serifs and sans-serifs. Serifs were a hold-over from the times when words were chiseled into stone or wax (because they provided clean lines to the letters), but it was bothersome to add serifs on every letter when writing by hand. However, a new twist occurred in typography history. With the invention not only of movable type, but also word processing software, serifs are now as easy to use as sans-serif fonts. Now the decision to use one or the other is merely a matter of taste, design, and readability.

“Gothic” lettering is today seen as a fancy font that one rarely uses. However, Gill points out that what we think of as gothic lettering just used to be the normal way to write letters. When writing was chiseled onto stone, the craftsmen found the easiest way to write was in the “gothic” style. After writing transitioned to paper though, people continued to use the gothic letters because they were the only type of letters they had been exposed to, and their shapes were natural in their eyes. They were simply copying the only letters they had ever seen.

Over the centuries the shape of letters has changed dramatically, not only because of the ease of holding a pen rather than a chisel, but also because writing practices began to favor standardization, and letter “type” stopped imitating handwriting styles. This is why we type in fonts that would be inefficient to write by hand. Gill acknowledges that we have developed “normal” styles of lettering, but encourages typography enthusiasts to be creative with their lettering (without being absurd).

-Lauren Galloway, student employee

Resources:

Typography Tuesday

Yesterday we showed some decorative endpapers featuring owls from the soon-to-be-cataloged, 1972 publication Reed, Pen, & Brush Alphabets for writing and lettering by the noted American calligrapher Edward M. Catich, printed by Catich at his Catfish Press on the campus of St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa. Today we present some of Catich’s calligraphic examples from this 2-volume publication that features a commentary text and a portfolio of plates. 

Edward M. Catich was a calligrapher, type designer, stone cutter, musician, educator, and Roman Catholic priest who taught multiple disciplines at St. Ambrose College from 1938 until his death in 1979. Through his calligraphic practice and his in-depth study of the epigraphy on Trajan’s Column, Catich came to firmly believe that the serifs we are familiar with from the Roman capitals of the early Imperial period derive not from the use of chisel in stone, as is commonly understood, but rather from the use of the flat brush when writing Roman letter forms. He expounded on this theory in several publications, including this one. Besides his calligraphic work, Catich also designed two typefaces, Petrarch and Catfish.

Our copy of  Reed, Pen, & Brush Alphabets includes a signed presentation from Edward Catich to his fellow type designer Alexander S. Lawson who taught typography at the Rochester Insistute of Technology during the same period that Catich was at St. Ambrose.