Adobe Jenson

Last updated
Adobe Jenson
Adobe Jenson.svg
Category Serif
Classification Old-style
Venetian
Designer(s) Robert Slimbach
Foundry Adobe Type
Design based on Nicolas Jenson

Adobe Jenson is an old-style serif typeface drawn for Adobe Systems by its chief type designer Robert Slimbach. Its Roman styles are based on a text face cut by Nicolas Jenson in Venice around 1470, and its italics are based on those created by Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi fifty years later.

Contents

Jenson is an organic design, with a low x-height. It is considered a highly readable typeface and is accordingly often used in book design for body text.

Development

A specimen of Nicolas Jenson's roman typeface, from the "Laertis" published in Venice ca 1475. Jenson 1475 venice laertius.png
A specimen of Nicolas Jenson's roman typeface, from the "Laertis" published in Venice ca 1475.
Optical sizing in Adobe Jenson JensonOpticalSizes.png
Optical sizing in Adobe Jenson

Adobe Jenson was first released in 1996 as a multiple master font. [1] It was created using sophisticated interpolation or multiple-master technology, to create a range of weights and optical sizes suitable for different text sizes. [2] This partial automation of font creation was intended to allow a gradual trend in styles from solid, chunky designs for caption-size small print to more graceful and slender designs for headings. [3] [a] It is now sold in the standard OpenType font format under the name Adobe Jenson Pro. [6] Jenson's type used an 'M' with two-way top serifs and a 'Q' with a curled tail, both now not commonly seen; the default characters are more contemporary forms but both were included as alternate characters. [7]

Adobe Jenson Pro

Adobe Jenson Pro is an OpenType update of the original family. The font family supports Adobe CE, ISO-Adobe (later Adobe Western 2), dingbat character sets. The family comes with 4 weights each in roman and italic, and 4 optical sizes. Supported OpenType features include Stylistic alternates, ligatures, proportional numbers, old style figures, small caps, subscripts and superscripts, ordinals, and swashes (italic fonts only).

Optical sizesCaptionRegularSubheadDisplay
Intended point sizes6–99–13.413.4–21.921.9–72

Many other typefaces have been cut based on the work of Jenson. William Morris's Golden Type created the trend in the 1890s; his design is known for its emboldening of Jenson's original design, giving it something of the feel of blackletter. [8] It is named for The Golden Legend , which was intended to be the first book printed using it. [9] [10] Popular since the 1930s, Bruce Rogers' Centaur is a much more slender revival in the same style. American Type Founders' Cloister Old Style was created by its design team led by Morris Fuller Benton around 1915, during the same period as Centaur. [11] [12] Ludlow created another release with italic under the direction of Ernst F. Detterer and Robert Hunter Middleton in the 1920s. [13] American Type Founders also issued a very eccentric[ according to whom? ] Jenson revival inspired by the work of Morris which is little-known today. [14] Tobias Frere-Jones created a revival in 1994 named Hightower Text that is bundled with some Microsoft software, adding his own italic design. [15]

Related Research Articles

In typography, a serif is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface, and a typeface that does not include them is sans-serif. Some typography sources refer to sans-serif typefaces as "grotesque" or "Gothic" and serif typefaces as "roman".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Garamond</span> Typeface family

Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Garamond-style typefaces are popular and particularly often used for book printing and body text.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bodoni</span> Serif typeface

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. Bodoni's typefaces are classified as Didone or modern. Bodoni followed the ideas of John Baskerville, as found in the printing type Baskerville—increased stroke contrast reflecting developing printing technology and a more vertical axis—but he took them to a more extreme conclusion. Bodoni had a long career and his designs changed and varied, ending with a typeface of a slightly condensed underlying structure with flat, unbracketed serifs, extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, and an overall geometric construction.

x-height Measurement of letters in a typeface

In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the letter x in the font, as well as the letters v, w, and z. One of the most important dimensions of a font, x-height defines how high lowercase letters without ascenders are compared to the cap height of uppercase letters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Myriad (typeface)</span> Humanist sans-serif typeface family

Myriad is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems. Myriad was intended as a neutral, general-purpose typeface that could fulfill a range of uses and have a form easily expandable by computer-aided design to a large range of weights and widths.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caslon</span> Typeface with serifs

Caslon is the name given to serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I in London, or inspired by his work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Font</span> Particular size, weight and style of a typeface

In metal typesetting, a font or fount is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface, defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni includes fonts "Roman", "bold" and "italic"; each of these exists in a variety of sizes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multiple master fonts</span> Extension to Adobe Systems Type 1 PostScript fonts

Multiple master fonts are an extension to Adobe Systems' Type 1 PostScript fonts, now superseded by the advent of OpenType and, in particular, the introduction of OpenType Font Variations in OpenType 1.8, also called variable fonts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Swash (typography)</span> Typographical flourish found on some letterforms, particularly in italics

A swash is a typographical flourish, such as an exaggerated serif, terminal, tail, entry stroke, etc., on a glyph. The use of swash characters dates back to at least the 16th century, as they can be seen in Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi's La Operina, which is dated 1522. As with italic type in general, they were inspired by the conventions of period handwriting. Arrighi's designs influenced designers in Italy and particularly in France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minion (typeface)</span> Serif typeface

Minion is a serif typeface released in 1990 by Adobe Systems. Designed by Robert Slimbach, it is inspired by late Renaissance-era type and intended for body text and extended reading. Minion's name comes from the traditional naming system for type sizes, in which minion is between nonpareil and brevier, with the type body 7pt in height. As the historically rooted name indicates, Minion was designed for body text in a classic style, although slightly condensed and with large apertures to increase legibility. Slimbach described the design as having "a simplified structure and moderate proportions." The design is slightly condensed, although Slimbach has said that this was intended not for commercial reasons so much as to achieve a good balance of the size of letters relative to the ascenders and descenders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Centaur (typeface)</span> Serif typeface

Centaur is a serif typeface by book and typeface designer Bruce Rogers, based on the Renaissance-period printing of Nicolas Jenson around 1470. He used it for his design of the Oxford Lectern Bible. It was given widespread release by the British branch of Monotype, paired with an italic designed by calligrapher Frederic Warde and based on the slightly later work of calligrapher and printer Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi. The italic has sometimes been named separately as the "Arrighi" italic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arno (typeface)</span> Serif typeface

Arno, or Arno Pro, is a serif type family created by Robert Slimbach at Adobe intended for professional use. The name refers to the river that runs through Florence, a centre of the Italian Renaissance. Arno is an old-style serif font, drawing inspiration from a variety of 15th and 16th century typefaces. Slimbach has described the design as a combination of the period's Aldine and Venetian styles, with italics inspired by the calligraphy and printing of Ludovico degli Arrighi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adobe Originals</span>

The Adobe Originals program is a series of digital typefaces created by Adobe Systems from 1989 for professional use, intended to be of extremely high design quality while offering a large feature set across many languages. Many are strongly influenced by research into classic designs from the past and calligraphy. Adobe Originals fonts are sold separately or with Adobe products such as InDesign.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Utopia (typeface)</span> Serif typeface

Utopia is a transitional serif typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and released by Adobe Systems in 1989.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of California Old Style</span> 1938 serif typeface by Frederic Goudy

University of California Old Style is a serif typeface designed by Frederic Goudy and created for the University of California Press from 1936–8. It is one of Goudy's most popular serif typefaces. It is also known as Berkeley Old Style and Californian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cloister (typeface)</span> Serif typeface

Cloister is a serif typeface that was designed by Morris Fuller Benton and published by American Type Founders from around 1913. It is loosely based on the printing of Nicolas Jenson in Venice in the 1470s, in what is now called the "old style" of serif fonts. American Type Founders presented it as an attractive but highly usable serif typeface, suitable both for body text and display use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Source Sans</span> Sans-serif typeface family

Source Sans is a sans-serif typeface created by Paul D. Hunt, released by Adobe in 2012. It is the first open-source font family from Adobe, distributed under the SIL Open Font License.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goudy Sans</span> Humanist sans-serif typeface

Goudy Sans is a sans-serif typeface designed by Frederic Goudy around 1929–1931 and published by Lanston Monotype.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Golden Type</span> Typeface designed by William Morris

The Golden Type is a serif typeface designed by artist William Morris for his fine book printing project, the Kelmscott Press, in 1890. It is an "old-style" serif face, based on type designed by engraver and printer Nicolas Jenson in Venice around 1470. It is named for the Golden Legend, which was intended to be the first book printed using it. The original design has neither an italic nor a bold weight, as neither of these existed in Jenson's time.

References

  1. "SOTA Typography Award Honors Robert Slimbach". SOTA. Retrieved 8 January 2016.
  2. "DesigningMultiple Master Typefaces" (PDF). Adobe. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-07-06. Retrieved 2 July 2015.
  3. Riggs, Tamye. "The Adobe Originals Silver Anniversary Story". Typekit blog. Adobe. Retrieved 2 July 2015.
  4. Phinney, Thomas. "Font Remix Tools (RMX) and Multiple Master Fonts in type design". Phinney. Retrieved 4 July 2015.
  5. Phinney, Thomas. "TrueType, PostScript Type 1, & OpenType: What's the Difference?" (PDF). Adobe. Retrieved 4 July 2015.
  6. Twardoch; Slimbach; Sousa; Slye (2007). Arno Pro (PDF). San Jose: Adobe Systems. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 August 2014. Retrieved 14 August 2015.
  7. Burke, Christopher (1998). "Typeface review: Adobe Jenson". Bulletin of the Printing Historical Society: 16–17.
  8. William S. Peterson (1991). The Kelmscott Press: A History of William Morris's Typographical Adventure . University of California Press. pp.  39, 81–95, 194–305. ISBN   978-0-520-06138-5.
  9. Charles Harvey; Jon Press (1991). William Morris: Design and Enterprise in Victorian Britain. Manchester University Press. pp. 201–2. ISBN   978-0-7190-2419-1.
  10. Alexander S. Lawson (January 1990). Anatomy of a Typeface. David R. Godine Publisher. pp. 47–51. ISBN   978-0-87923-333-4.
  11. "ITC Golden Type". MyFonts. ITC. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  12. "LTC Cloister". LTC. MyFonts. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  13. "Nicolas Jenson SG". MyFonts. Speice Graphics/Ludlow. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  14. "LTC Jenson". LTC. MyFonts. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  15. Frere-Jones, Tobias. "Hightower". Font Bureau. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  1. The original goal was that this would be controllable from inside applications using text, so a user could fine-tune the font to the exact form they needed (thickness, optical size, level of condensation, etc.) [4] Making apps support this proved impractical, and so instead multiple master fonts have been released in a set of styles likely to be useful. [5]