Typefaces

Garamond

Sep 2, 1530

Garamond is a group of many old-style serif typefaces, originally those designed by Parisian craftsman Claude Garamond and other 16th century French engravers, and now many modern revivals. Though his name was written as 'Garamont' in his lifetime, the typefaces are generally spelled 'Garamond'.

Caslon

Sep 2, 1725

Caslon is a group of serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I (1692–1766) in London. Caslon worked as an engraver of punches, the masters used to stamp the moulds or matrices used to cast metal type. He worked in the tradition of what is now called old-style serif letter design, that produced letters with a relatively organic structure resembling handwriting with a pen.

Fette Fraktur

Jul 8, 1875

Fette Fraktur is a blackletter typeface of the sub-classification Fraktur designed by the German punchcutter Johann Christian Bauer (1802–1867) in 1850. The C.E. Weber Foundry published a version in 1875, and the D Stempel AG foundry published the version shown at right in 1908.

Franklin Gothic

May 8, 1902

Franklin Gothic and its related faces are realist sans-serif typefaces originated by Morris Fuller Benton (1872–1948) in 1902. “Gothic” was a contemporary term (now little-used except to describe period designs) meaning sans-serif. Franklin Gothic has been used in many advertisements and headlines in newspapers.

Copper Black

Jul 14, 1922

Cooper Black is a heavily weighted, display serif typeface designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper in 1921 and released by the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler type foundry in 1922.

Bodoni

Oct 14, 1925

Bodoni is the name given to the serif typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) in the late eighteenth century and frequently revived since.

Futura

Oct 14, 1927

Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1927 by Paul Renner. It was designed as a contribution on the New Frankfurt-project. It is based on geometric shapes that became representative of visual elements of the Bauhaus design style of 1919–33 It was commissioned as a typeface by the Bauer Type Foundry, in reaction to Ludwig & Mayer's seminal Erbar of 1922.

Gill Sans

Aug 12, 1928

Gill Sans is a sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards. Gill Sans takes inspiration from the calligrapher and lettering artist Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Underground, now (although not at the time) most often simply called the "Johnston" typeface.

Helvetica

Dec 9, 1957

Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with input from Eduard Hoffmann. It is a neo-grotesque or realist design, one influenced by the famous 19th century typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk and other German and Swiss designs. Its use became a hallmark of the International Typographic Style that emerged from the work of Swiss designers in the 1950s and 60s.

Bell Centennial

Sep 16, 1978

Bell Centennial is a sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter in the period 1975–78. The typeface was commissioned by AT&T as a proprietary type to replace their then current directory typeface Bell Gothic on the occasion of AT&T’s one hundredth anniversary. Carter was working for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company which now licenses the face for general public use.

Avenir

Jan 2, 1988

Avenir is a proportional geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988 and released by Linotype GmbH, now a subsidiary of Monotype Corporation. The word avenir is French for "future". The font takes inspiration from the early geometric sans-serif typefaces Erbar (1922), designed by Jakob Erbar, and Futura (1927), designed by Paul Renner

Zapfino

Sep 15, 1988

Zapfino is a calligraphic typeface designed for Linotype by typeface designer Hermann Zapf in 1998. It is based on an alphabet Zapf originally penned in 1944. As a font, it makes extensive use of ligatures and character variations (for example, the lower case letter d has nine variations).

Trajan

Oct 14, 1989

Trajan is an old style serif typeface designed in 1989 by Carol Twombly for Adobe. The design is based on the letterforms of capitalis monumentalis or Roman square capitals, as used for the inscription at the base of Trajan's Column from which the typeface takes its name.

FF Meta

Jun 10, 1991

FF Meta is a humanist sans-serif typeface family designed by Erik Spiekermann and released in 1991through his FontFont library. According to Spiekermann, FF Meta was intended to be a "complete antithesis of Helvetica", which he found "boring and bland"

comic sans

Oct 10, 1994

Comic Sans MS, commonly referred to as Comic Sans, is a sans-serif casual script typeface designed by Vincent Connare and released in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation. It is a casual, non-connecting script inspired by comic book lettering, intended for use in informal documents and children's materials.

Georgia

Nov 1, 1996

Georgia is a serif typeface designed in 1993 by Matthew Carter and hinted by Tom Rickner for the Microsoft Corporation. It was intended as a serif font that would appear elegant but legible printed small or on low-resolution screens.