Readymag Design Almanac: Typography

1. Proportions

Notwithstanding the obvious difference in physical dimensions (the blockiness of the Benton is part of its adaptation for use as a text face for screens), the faces are alike in the squatness of their lowercase letters, which have distinctly short ascenders and descenders. Benton Sans has a bit larger x-height than its partner.

Farnham and Benton Sans are regularly proportioned typefaces. Notable in their capitals is the suggestion of rectangles and ovals rather than squares and circles.

The lowercase letters of both are wide. Given that “a well-ventilated” line is easiest to read, openness of letterforms is important when it comes to choosing a text face. In Benton Sans, note the undisturbed simplicity of the apertures with outward-pointing terminals. In Farnham, whose letters tend to be compact, openness is cleverly achieved by the squareness in the counterparts, letting the lowercase letters gently open up.

The very close similarity in proportions — the large x-height and short ascenders and descenders — optimize the readability of both faces for small text blocks and create a more regular and fairly tight (perhaps calmer) leading.

2. Details

Farnham is clever and resourceful in many ways, but its baroque details and vibrancy are always at the service of essentially pragmatic tasks. On closer examination, the businesslike, deliberately plain forms of Benton Sans have almost the same degree of dynamics as Farnham, the serif partner.

1. Proportions

While very different in appearance, the faces do share some things — relatively large x-height and the similar length of the extenders. In all else, they differ significantly. Century's capitals are taller and narrower than Sweet's. Century tends to bunch its hanging elements, while Sweet lets them fall freely. Century's ascenders are the height of its capitals. Sweet's are taller.

Century and Sweet's capitals differ in width but are very similar in their proportions – both are regularly proportioned types. Century tends to frame its capitals in a narrow rectangle (with sides in an approximate relationship of 2x3), while Sweet's capitals tend to squareness.

In the lowercases, both typefaces carry forward the intention announced in the capitals. Century seeks maximum compactness, while Sweet lounges comfortably across space. At the same time, unlike Sweet, whose lowercase letters are relatively equal in width, Century's lowercase letters include several notable exceptions: the letters -e- and -s- are wider than the others by just enough to stand apart distinctively in text-sizes.

Despite their important differences, both faces work very well as text type. Sweet has everything that a sans serif needs for comfortable reading. On the other hand, it is best to go with as large a Century as possible, for the Century image is not well adapted for showing on screens.

2. Details

Century Old Style is consistent in mixing a late-19th-century typeface with elements of letterforms from a century and more before. It does not draw the elements from a single model but blends elements from many. Sweet Sans, unlikeCentury, is a typeface with a direct connection to its prototypes — the engraving-likescripts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Today, when many people are rediscovering the warmth of “analog” things — the purr of old recordings, the grainy texture of photographic film, sweaters and scarves as granny might have knit them — designers and typographers are, too, in their own distinctive ways.

In addition to a growing interest in calligraphy, letterpress printing and the forms of old-time sign painting, there is the obvious popularity of all things connected to Victorian typography, which offers a bit of unhurried domestic ease in a world of instant communications and thus seems to take us back to a time when the fastest means of travel was the steam locomotive and when letters in actual paper envelopes were delivered to one's door.

In the world of digital typefaces, the nostalgia for handmade things has given rise to a new demand for the awkward charm and plastic variety of old sans-serifs.

Sweet Sans takes its inspiration from models of engraved lettering found on various kinds of personal and business correspondence from a hundred years ago and widens the range of application to the maximum — from large titles and headlines to blocks of text and footnotes.

The typeface is available to Readymag users in five styles: Light, Regular, Italic, Medium and Bold.

Century Old Style is part of the large and famous type-family that carries the Century name, but it is quite distinctive in character and details.

Linn Boyd Benton launched the Century dynasty in 1894 when, to meet an order from his friend Theodore de Vinny (a fine typographer, historian and publisher), Benton created a typeface of great clarity and readability for the Century magazine.

Its obvious superiority to the then prevalent narrow and highly contrastive typefaces sparked demand for the new face, which at first was used exclusively for the journal. In 1899 American Type Founders (of which Linn Boyd was an executive) produced a version for general use: Century Roman.

Several years later Linn's son, Morris Fuller Benton, was asked to work out a new version of the face based on his father's creation. The result was one of the best-selling and most popular typefaces of the 20th century — Century Expanded. Between the debut of Century Expanded in 1900 and the birth of its famed descendant, Century Schoolbook, in 1918, the Century family witnessed the birth in 1909 of Century Old Style.

Century Old Style, while retaining the same general x-height as in the rest of the Century group, as well as very similar proportions and degrees of contrast, has its own special character, as suggested by its name. Its “old-style-ness” (or rather the late 19th-early 20th century's notion of old style) involved, first of all, the ball terminals and serifs and the connections between strokes and stems (in Expanded the connections are smooth, but in Old Style the meetings are at sharp angles). These seemingly small changes strongly affect the rhythm, shape and spirit of the typeface, the potential of which was fully revealed in the second half of the 20th century.

The typeface is available for users of Redymag in three styles: Regular, Italic and Bold.

1. Proportions

The basic difference in the proportions of Chaparral and Proxima Nova is the x-heights in equivalent body sizes. The relations of uppercase and lowercase in Chaparral are close to those of classical Renaissance faces, with the lowercase letters rising slightly higher than the midpoint of the capitals (a relation of 2 to 3). The vertical parameters of Proxima are more contemporary: large x-height and quite short ascenders and descenders.

Despite the variations in width of Chaparral's lowercase letters, which are very much like 15th-16th century faces, Chaparral's narrowed capitals (C, D, G, O and Q) take it out of the humanist class. It is a hybrid. The proportions of Proxima's capitals are more rationalized. The wide C, D, G, O and Q, along with the even wider B, E, F, P, J, Y and V, keep the rhythm of the face consistent and calm.

Proxima's lowercase letters are more consistent than Chaparral's in their proportions but, in hybrid fashion, combine details of old 19th-century grotesques and 20th-century geometric sans serifs.

Used as body faces, these fonts are very different in rhythmic potential. Proxima, with its squat lowercase letters and short extenders, produces a solid, horizontal line. Chaparral, with its short lowercase letters and relatively long ascenders, creates a more complex effect, both within and between lines.

2. Details

With its moderate degree of contrast and slab serifs — more suggestive of typewriter than of Renaissance faces — Chaparral avoids monotony through variety of proportions and wealth of shapes. On the other hand, Proxima is a rather varied assemblage of shapes and details. But they work as a team.

Chaparral Pro is a slab-serif typeface designed by Carol Twombly of Adobe Systems and released in 2000.

Twombly is a well-known American calligrapher and type designer who has designed many typefaces, including such widely popular examples as Trajan, Myriad and Adobe Caslon.

Robert Bringhurst in his Elements of Typographic Style wrote: “Carol Twombly completed this extraordinarily clean and seemingly imperturbable typeface in 1997. Most good text types owe their power in part to the rhythmic modulation of the line. Here there is some modulation, but very little, and the power comes from the path of the stroke: the subtle out-of-roundness of the bowls and microscopic taper of the stems.”

The slab serif, thanks to its high legibility, is an appropriate choice for texts of all sizes in print or on screen.

The typeface is available to Readymag users in eight styles: Light, Light Italic, Regular, Italic, SemiBold, SemiBold Italic, Bold, Bold Italic.

In its few years of existence, Proxima Nova has become widely popular and is much used in print and for screens.

Its well-deserved success is due to its generally eclectic character. The Proxima Nova look is a synthesis of very different historical models: from so-called “engineer” grotesques used for nameplates, certain kinds of industrial documents and in road signs (say hello to Copperplate Gothic, Sweet Sans, Gotham and Interstate!) to faces derived from avant-garde aesthetics (hello Futura!) and the stylistics of Art Deco (hello Kabel!). All these sources do, in fact, have something in common — their obvious basis in clear geometric forms.

In more than a quarter-century of development (the first sketches date from 1981), Mark Simonson has created a typeface in which the particulars and spirit of sans serif from a variety of times work in harmony and that, thanks to careful drawing and exact proportions, serves equally well for display purposes and as a body face.

The typeface is available to Readymag users in 14 styles: Thin, Thin Italic, Light, Light Italic, Regular, Italic, SemiBold, SemiBold Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, ExtraBold, ExtraBold Italic, Black, Black Italic