Category | Serif |
---|---|
Classification | Glyphic |
Designer(s) | Berthold Wolpe |
Commissioned by | Stanley Morison |
Foundry | Monotype Corporation |
Date created | 1932 |
Variations | Pegasus |
Albertus is a glyphic serif display typeface designed by Berthold Wolpe in the period 1932 to 1940 for the British branch of the printing company Monotype. Wolpe named the font after Albertus Magnus, the thirteenth-century German philosopher and theologian.
Wolpe studied as a metal engraver, and Albertus was modelled to resemble letters carved into bronze. The face began as titling capitals. Eventually a lowercase roman was added, and later a strongly cursive, narrow italic. Albertus has slight glyphic serifs. It is available in light and italic varieties.
The project began in 1932. [1] Titling caps were released first, and the Monotype Recorder of summer 1935 presented the capitals as an advance showing. [2] Other characters and a lower case were added by 1940. Albertus has remained popular since its release and since the end of mass use of metal type phototypesetting and digital versions have been released.
In the metal type period, Albertus was offered with alternative characters, including a non-descending 'J' that stops at the baseline, an 'M' that reaches the baseline, and a different ampersand, similar to that used on Dwiggins' Metro. [3] [4]
Wolpe later designed Pegasus, a spiky serif design intended to complement Albertus with more body text-oriented proportions. It was less popular and had faded in popularity by the end of the metal type period, although Matthew Carter digitised it and added a bold and italic in 1980 as part of a commemorative exhibition project on Wolpe's work. [5] [6]
Albertus is used for the street name signs in the City of London, City of London Corporation and London Borough of Lambeth (where Wolpe resided until his death in 1989). Wolpe frequently used it in book jackets he designed for the London publisher Faber and Faber. It has also been used in many other publications.
Outside of publications an adapted version of Albertus is particularly known for its use in surreal British Television series The Prisoner (1967–68), where it was used for all signage in the show's unusual prison setting (an Italianate village), as well as for the series' logo. The key adaptations were the removal of the dots from 'i's and 'j's and an uncial-style 'e'. [7] It is also used for the title card on the American television series How to Get Away with Murder and was the typeface for Electronic Arts from 1999 to 2020. It is also known for its use by director John Carpenter in the opening credits of several of his films, including Escape from New York , The Thing , Big Trouble in Little China , Prince of Darkness , and They Live . The typeface is also used for the logo of David Lynch's 1984 adaptation of Dune. The typeface was also used by Scott Cawthon in a few teasers for Five Nights at Freddy's 4 on his website in 2015.
Monotype released an updated digital version of Albertus, named Albertus Nova, in 2017. It was digitised by Toshi Omagari as part of a Berthold Wolpe Collection series that included Pegasus and three other Wolpe typefaces. [8] [9] Monotype promoted the digitisation with an exhibition at the Type Museum in London. [8] [9] Omagari added a number of alternates, including metal type alternates, an 'A' based on Wolpe's lettering and an uncial 'e' used in the production design of The Prisoner . [10] [11]
Monotype's previous digital version is also available and Albertus digitisations have also been sold by Adobe, Bitstream, Fontsite, SoftMaker and others. [12] [13] [14] Bitstream's version is called Flareserif 821.
URW++ released a lookalike version known as A028 for free for use with Ghostscript and TeX. Featuring medium and extra-bold weights but no italics, A028 is widely available on Linux systems and other open source environments.
Palatino is the name of an old-style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, initially released in 1949 by the Stempel foundry and later by other companies, most notably the Mergenthaler Linotype Company.
Matthew Carter is a British type designer. A 2005 New Yorker profile described him as 'the most widely read man in the world' by considering the amount of text set in his commonly used typefaces.
Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.
Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with consumer electronics devices. Based in Woburn, Massachusetts, the company has been responsible for many developments in printing technology—in particular the Monotype machine, which was a fully mechanical hot metal typesetter, that produced texts automatically, all single type. Monotype was involved in the design and production of many typefaces in the 20th century. Monotype developed many of the most widely used typeface designs, including Times New Roman, Gill Sans, Arial, Bembo and Albertus.
Johnston is a sans-serif typeface designed by and named after Edward Johnston. The typeface was commissioned in 1913 by Frank Pick, commercial manager of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, as part of his plan to strengthen the company's corporate identity. Johnston was originally created for printing, but it rapidly became used for the enamel station signs of the Underground system as well.
Berthold Ludwig Wolpe was a German calligrapher, typographer, type designer, book designer and illustrator. He was born into a Jewish family at Offenbach near Frankfurt, emigrated to England soon after the Nazis came to power in 1935 and became a naturalized British citizen in 1947. He was made a Royal Designer for Industry in 1959, awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Art in 1968 and appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1983. He died in London in 1989.
Bembo is a serif typeface created by the British branch of the Monotype Corporation in 1928–1929 and most commonly used for body text. It is a member of the "old-style" of serif fonts, with its regular or roman style based on a design cut around 1495 by Francesco Griffo for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, sometimes generically called the "Aldine roman". Bembo is named for Manutius's first publication with it, a small 1496 book by the poet and cleric Pietro Bembo. The italic is based on work by Giovanni Antonio Tagliente, a calligrapher who worked as a printer in the 1520s, after the time of Manutius and Griffo.
Bookman, or Bookman Old Style, is a serif typeface. A wide, legible design that is slightly bolder than most body text faces, Bookman has been used for both display typography, for trade printing such as advertising, and less commonly for body text. In advertising use it is particularly associated with the graphic design of the 1960s and 1970s, when revivals of it were very popular.
Akzidenz-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family originally released by the Berthold Type Foundry of Berlin. "Akzidenz" indicates its intended use as a typeface for commercial print runs such as publicity, tickets and forms, as opposed to fine printing, and "grotesque" was a standard name for sans-serif typefaces at the time.
Goudy Old Style is an old-style serif typeface originally created by Frederic W. Goudy for American Type Founders (ATF) in 1915.
Joanna is a serif typeface designed by Eric Gill (1882–1940) from 1930 to 1931 that was named for one of his daughters. Gill chose Joanna for setting An Essay on Typography, a book by Gill on his thoughts on typography, typesetting and page design. He described it as "a book face free from all fancy business".
Syntax comprises a family of fonts designed by Swiss typeface designer Hans Eduard Meier. Originally just a sans-serif font, it was extended with additional serif designs.
Plantin is an old-style serif typeface. It was created in 1913 by the British Monotype Corporation for their hot metal typesetting system and is named after the sixteenth-century printer Christophe Plantin. It is loosely based on a Gros Cicero roman type cut in the 16th century by Robert Granjon held in the collection of the Plantin–Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Century is a family of serif type faces particularly intended for body text. The family originates from a first design, Century Roman, cut by American Type Founders designer Linn Boyd Benton in 1894 for master printer Theodore Low De Vinne, for use in The Century Magazine. ATF rapidly expanded it into a very large family, first by Linn Boyd, and later by his son Morris.
Carter Sans is a typeface by Matthew Carter, in collaboration with Dan Reynolds. In style, it is described as a "hybrid sans-serif" or "humanist stressed sans", as it does not have serifs, but letters do flare slightly near the ends of strokes, which is particularly notable in the capitals. This is a relatively rarer style, and Carter states that he was particularly influenced by Albertus (1932–40) by Berthold Wolpe, also of Monotype.
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.
Ehrhardt is an old-style serif typeface released by the British branch of the Monotype Corporation in 1938. Ehrhardt is a modern adaptation of printing types of "stout Dutch character" from the Dutch Baroque tradition sold by the Ehrhardt foundry in Leipzig. These were cut by the Hungarian-Transylvanian pastor and punchcutter Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis while in Amsterdam in the period from 1680 to 1689.
Metro is a sans-serif typeface family created by William Addison Dwiggins and released by the American Mergenthaler Linotype Company from 1929 onwards.
Berthold Block is a sans-serif typeface released by the H. Berthold foundry in the early twentieth century and intended for display use. Block has a chunky design suitable for headings, with short descenders allowing tight linespacing and rounded corners. It is sometimes simply called "Block". Font design expert Stephen Coles describes it as "a soft but substantial display face with compact dimensions and an organic appearance…[it] isn’t meant for body copy." The Klingspor Museum credits it to Hermann Hoffmann, who managed type design for Berthold.