Century Old Style

Sweet Sans

Why do they match?

The pairing of Century Old Style and Sweet Sans is a pairing of maximum contrasts. Unlike as they may be, each typeface seems to say to the other — Hey, look, I've got everything you haven’t! And they not only can get along well together but offer something very special in simply switching roles.

Sweet Sans Uppercase

Lowercase

Numbers & Symbols

Century Old Style Lowercase

Uppercase

Numbers & Symbols

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.

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.

About

Century Old Style

Sweet Sans

Morris Fuller Benton

1909

American Type Founders Company

Mark van Bronkhorst

2011

MVB Fonts

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.

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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.