Ed Benguiat (October 1927– October 2020)
Ed Benguiat may be best known to the general public for his eponymous typeface, but he designed many typefaces. While working for Photo-Lettering, Inc (known as PLINC), and for ITC (International Typeface Corporation) Benguiat designed Barcelona, Bookman, Caslon No. 224, ITC Century Handtooled, ITC Edwardian Script, Souvenir, Tiffany and other popular faces. He was a teacher and a mentor. He inspired a collection of typefaces by House Industries. read more…
Benjamin Franklin’s waggish defense of John Baskerville’s type
In 1760, the American printer, Benjamin Franklin wrote to John Baskerville and paid him a visit.
Baskerville’s reputation, and even his eponymous typeface, had been maligned by “gentlemen” who may have been jealous of Baskerville’s talent, nonconformism, and increasing success. Baskerville used excerpts from one of Franklin’s letters as an “unsolicited testimonial“ in advertisements, but typographers will appreciate how clever Franklin was in his support of Baskerville: read more…
Lasting ephemera: Samuel Johnson’s “The Rambler”
The Rambler was a twopenny* sheet issued twice weekly in London between 1750 and 1752, each issue was a single anonymous essay. 208 periodical essays appeared, all but four written by Samuel Johnson. Dr. Johnson’s incentive was to pay the bills (“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money”) while he was at work on his great Dictionary. read more…
Ampersands, &c.
The ampersand has been with us perhaps since the first century CE in one form or another. It’s a conjoining of the e and t, forming the Latin et, which means “and.” You can still make out both letters in even the most abstract designs since typographers know that the ampersand is a ligature and design it as such. Because ampersands are so highly stylized, they can add verve to a workhorse typeface. read more…
American Type Founders Specimen Book…
American Type Founders was born of a merger of 23 type foundries in 1892. In the early 1920s, American Type Founders had come to dominate the huge metal foundry type market in the United States. They budgeted a whopping $300,000 (millions in today’s dollars) to produce 60,00 copies of their 1923 Specimen Book. read more…
Georgia: old style text figures
Old style figures blend invisibly into text.
Old style text figures (or lower case, non-lining numerals) have become popular in graphic design in recent years. read more…
Italic ampersands liven up logos
Bulmer MT Regular with a Goudy Oldstyle Italic ampersand
The italic versions of ampersands are typically less restrained than their roman counterparts. read more…
Cincinnati Type Foundry sale flyer
We recently purchased this 11 x 17″ sale flyer. read more…
Type Anatomy
Our type anatomy chart, which was inspired by a similar diagram in U&lc magazine in the early 1980s. Access a high resolution pdf here. Besides typographic parts, we’ve included some diacritical marks, punctuation and common sorts.
St. Patrick’s leprechaun, shamrock, green beer typeface
Every year we trundle out the “Gaelic fonts,” for St. Patrick’s Day. Insular (Irish) scripts, or uncials started out as a Byzantine script which enjoyed widespread use, but they are now often associated with the Book of Kells and are viewed as Celtic, or perhaps even less accurately as Gaelic. Uncials are a script form which was developed from Roman cursive during the early Byzantine era (third century) along with the new, smooth media of parchment and vellum. Ascenders and descenders were developed in uncials, contributing to the later development of upper and lower case in early printed Gothic typefaces. read more…