Category | Serif |
---|---|
Classification | Old-style Dutch |
Designer(s) | Nicholas Kis |
Foundry | Monotype Corporation |
Date released | 1938, 1680s |
Design based on | Janson |
Variations | Fleet Titling |
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. [1] These were cut by the Hungarian-Transylvanian pastor and punchcutter Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis while in Amsterdam in the period from 1680 to 1689. [2] [3]
From 1937 to 1938, Monotype re-cut the type for modern-day usage, and it has become a popular book typeface. Ehrhardt has a slightly condensed design, giving it a strongly vertical, crisp appearance.
Miklós Kis, a Transylvanian Protestant pastor and schoolteacher, became deeply interested in printing after being sent to Amsterdam to help print a Hungarian Protestant translation of the Bible. [4] [5] This was a period of considerable prosperity for the Netherlands and a time when its styles of printing were very influential across Europe, making it a centre for the creation of new typefaces. [6] [7] [8] He developed a second career as a punchcutter, an engraver of the punches used as a master for making moulds for metal type, working on commission for printers and governments. Kis returned to Transylvania around 1689 and may have left matrices (the moulds used to cast type) in Leipzig on his way home. [9] [lower-alpha 1] The Ehrhardt type foundry of Leipzig released a surviving specimen sheet of them around 1720. [10] [11]
Kis's typefaces were in the tradition of Dutch and German printing developed over the previous century that would later be called the "Dutch taste" (goût hollandois), a term originating from the writings of Pierre Simon Fournier in the next century. [12] This developed the influence of French typefounding such as the typefaces engraved by Claude Garamond with a smooth, even structure and 'e' with a level cross-stroke, by increasing the stroke width, boosting the x-height (height of lower-case letters) and reducing the length of the descenders to achieve a noticeably darker colour on the page. [13]
Kis's surviving matrices were first acquired by Stempel, and are now held in the collection of the Druckmuseum (Museum of Printing), Darmstadt. [14] They were earlier often called the Janson designs, after the Dutch printer Anton Janson, based in Leipzig, who it was once believed might have created them, and Linotype's revival of the same designs in a less condensed form accordingly is named Janson. [15] [16] Kis's identity as the maker of the typefaces was rediscovered by comparison with type from Hungarian archive sources (including an autobiography) on which his name was identified. [17] [18] [19]
Monotype's development of Ehrhardt took place under the influence of executive and historian of printing Stanley Morison, not long after their successful creation of Times New Roman. [20] It began from a recognition that the Janson designs were well-respected by fine printers of the Arts and Crafts period such as Daniel Berkeley Updike, who could print books from them using hand-set type cast from surviving original matrices owned by the Stempel company of Germany. Morison had discussed what he knew of their history with Updike in their extensive correspondence from the 1920s onwards. [21] Modernised versions of the Janson designs for hot metal printing were being created by Linotype and Monotype's American branch at the same time. [9] [22] In addition, Morison was interested in the history of printing in Leipzig, a centre of the German book trade, and would later write an article on the topic. [18]
Ehrhardt's development took place following a series of breakthroughs in printing technology which had occurred over the last fifty years without breaking from the use of metal type. Pantograph engraving had allowed punches to be precisely machined from large plan drawings. This gave a cleaner result than historic typefaces whose master punches had been hand-carved out of steel at the exact size of the desired letter. It also allowed rapid development of a large range of sizes with the same consistent style of letter in all of them, although in fact the design was adjusted to produce a clear image at different sizes, for instance by widening the letters and spacing and increasing the x-height. [24] [23] In addition, hand printing had been superseded by the hot metal typesetting systems of the period, of which Monotype's was one of the most popular (in competition with that of Linotype's). Both allowed metal type to be quickly cast under the control of a keyboard, eliminating the need to manually cast metal type and slot it into place into a printing press. With no need to keep type in stock, just the matrices used as moulds to cast the type, printers could use a wider range of fonts and there was increasing demand for varied typefaces. Artistically, meanwhile, the preference for using mechanical, geometric Didone letterforms introduced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was being displaced by a revival of interest in "old-style" serif fonts developed before this, a change that has proved to be lasting. [25] [26] [27] At the same time, hot metal typesetting had imposed new restrictions: in Monotype's system (while less restrictive than Linotype's), in order to mechanically count the number of characters that could be fitted on a line, letters could only be certain widths, and care was needed to produce letters that looked harmonious in spite of this. [27]
Monotype developed a revival of the Ehrhardt typefaces using a rediscovered specimen sheet as a source, while simultaneously also working on Van Dijck, a revival of the work of Christoffel van Dijck (d. 1669), a slightly earlier Dutch Baroque punch-cutter. [28] [29] Ehrhardt's original working title was 'Old Holländische', according to veteran Monotype designer Robin Nicholas. [30]
Developed by the Monotype drawing office team in Salfords, Surrey, led by Fritz Steltzer, the project veered away from a purely faithful revival towards a denser, more condensed design. [31] [32] [33] This differentiated it from the other Janson revivals on the market. [9] [34] [35] Nicholas commented "I think it was Morison's take on Janson - made a little heavier and narrower to give improved legibility and economy." [30] Typesetting expert Yannis Haralambous wrote of being told by a Monotype manager that the typeface was designed particularly for sale in Germany "to appeal to those who have a weakness for Fraktur" (blackletter or 'Gothic' typefaces, still very popular in Germany in the 1930s). [36] In its dense design it may be able to complement blackletter well, and Morison in his article on Leipzig printing suggested that this might have been a motivation behind the original's design style. [18] Ehrhardt's technical production followed Monotype's standard method of the period. The characters were drawn on paper in large plan diagrams by the highly experienced drawing office team, led and trained by Steltzer, who Monotype had recruited from the German printing industry. The drawing staff who executed the design was disproportionately female and in many cases recruited from the local area and the nearby Reigate art school. A wax-copy was made from these drawing, the wax-copy was used to produce a lead plate with the design. These plates were then used as a plan for machining metal punches to stamp matrices in the Benton-pantographs. [37] [38] It was Monotype's standard practice at the time to first engrave a limited number of characters and print proofs from them to test overall balance of colour on the page, before completing the remaining characters.
The finished design was first displayed in Monotype's journal, the Monotype Recorder, in 1938 with an unsigned blurb in what Carter would later call "the accents of Morison". [9] [39] Morison's article on the history of printing in Leipzig would later be typeset in it and it was also used to set a festschrift on his work after his death. [18] [40]
Distinctive features of Ehrhardt include an 'A' with gently curving bar matching the centre-link of the 'B', a wide 'T' with spreadeagled serifs on either side and a 'b' with no foot on the left. In italic the 'J' has a crossbar, the 'w' has sharp reverse curves towards the top and left, and the 'v' has a flourish on the left. [1] [41] The face has high stroke contrast (difference between thick and thin strokes) by the standards of most old-style serif fonts. In order to allow compact line spacing, descenders were kept reasonably short. [42]
Ehrhardt attracted considerable attention on its initial release; Monotype's publicity material blurbed it as "in the opinion of some authorities, the most important new book face since Times New Roman". [43] However Ehrhardt remains considerably less well-known than many of Monotype's other classic serif designs of the interwar period, such as Times, Perpetua, Garamond or Bembo. [31] [lower-alpha 2]
Harry Carter (who with George Buday made the modern attribution to Kis) wrote that "the letters of Monotype Ehrhardt are like those of the Janson, but the appearance of a page set in it is different. The Janson is more rotund and has greater contrast of thick and thin." [9] Writing in the 1970s, Carter had misgivings about the condensation, saying that it came close to turning Kis's work into an "accurate drudge" but that "it is a successful type-face". [9] He also suggested that some condensed typefaces made by Kis and sold to the Ducal printing establishment in Florence might have made for a more authentic model. [9] [2] Printing historian James Mosley's review of Morison's memoir, A Tally of Types, described the original metal type as "crudely drawn" compared with some earlier Monotype designs, and suggested that this was due to a change in works management at Monotype with the retirement of head engineer Frank Hinman Pierpont. [45]
Notable books set in Ehrhardt include the Oxford World's Classics series, the New English Bible , the Pelican Shakespeare, the Penguin 60s and Hugh Williamson's textbook Methods of Book Design. [42] [46] [47] [48] [49] It has also been used by Faber and Faber and The Iconic magazine. [50] [48] An extremely rare infant variant of the typeface also exists, which can be seen in the American edition of the book Hey! Get off Our Train by John Burningham. [51]
Monotype later created a bold and bold italic (called a semi-bold in some digitisations) to match the roman and italic of the original release. [9] [52] (True bold type did not exist in Kis's time. [53] ) Released in 1967, Fleet Titling was a capitals-only alphabet intended to serve as a companion for titling use. It was created by Monotype's occasional collaborator John Peters, a Cambridge University Press designer who also worked as a private printer. [54] [55] [56] Monotype used it for their logo and letterhead. [30] [57] More oddly, Monotype in the 1960s used Ehrhardt as a base for printing in the Initial Teaching Alphabet. This alphabet system, intended to be used to teach children to read, used alternative characters for different sounds spelled with the same letter, like t's and c's dropped below the baseline of the text. [58] [59]
Monotype has digitised Ehrhardt into the TrueType and OpenType font formats. It is sold in standard and professional releases, some releases including text figures and small caps (in the roman style only). Like several other Monotype typefaces digitised in the early period of computerised publishing, it is sold under two releases credited both to Monotype itself and to Adobe, the latter only in the standard version without small caps. [1] [60] Fleet Titling and the Initial Teaching Alphabet version have not been digitised.
Matthew Butterick created a revival of Ehrhardt called Equity, whose design was inspired by his experiences of office needs from working as a lawyer. [61] Equity has two grades designed to suit different types of paper and printers, known as Equity A and Equity B, the former of which is darker. Each grade has two weights (Regular and Bold), along with their respective italics, totalling four styles each. The typeface has separate small caps fonts intended for use in Word, although the latest versions also include main font files that can activate small caps as OpenType features. The roman style of Equity is designed to be metrically similar (but not identical) to Times New Roman, [62] while the metric of the italic style is considerably different.
Font Bureau also created the very large revival family Kis. Unlike other digitisations, this has been released in optical sizes, with a separate display-size font intended for headlines. It is used by the Los Angeles Times but (as of 2015) has not been released for online sale. [63] [lower-alpha 3]
Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper The Times in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration with Victor Lardent, a lettering artist in The Times's advertising department. It has become one of the most popular typefaces of all time and is installed on most personal computers.
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".
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.
Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.
In the manufacture of metal type used in letterpress printing, a matrix is the mould used to cast a letter, known as a sort. Matrices for printing types were made of copper.
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. Incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Woburn, Massachusetts, the company has been responsible for many developments in printing technology—in particular the Monotype machine, which was a fully mechanical hotmetal 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.
Caslon is the name given to serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I (c. 1692–1766) in London, or inspired by his work.
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.
Punchcutting is a craft used in traditional typography to cut letter punches in steel as the first stage of making metal type. Steel punches in the shape of the letter would be used to stamp matrices into copper, which were locked into a mould shape to cast type. Cutting punches and casting type was the first step of traditional typesetting. The cutting of letter punches was a highly skilled craft requiring much patience and practice. Often the designer of the type would not be personally involved in the cutting.
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. It is also used as the official font of Indonesian laws since 2011.
Janson is the name given to a set of old-style serif typefaces from the Dutch Baroque period, and modern revivals from the twentieth century. Janson is a crisp, relatively high-contrast serif design, most popular for body text.
Perpetua is a serif typeface that was designed by the English sculptor and stonemason Eric Gill for the British Monotype Corporation. Perpetua was commissioned at the request of Stanley Morison, an influential historian of printing and adviser to Monotype around 1925, when Gill's reputation as a leading artist-craftsman was high. Perpetua was intended as a crisp, contemporary design that did not follow any specific historic model, with a structure influenced by Gill's experience of carving lettering for monuments and memorials. Perpetua is commonly used for covers and headings and also sometimes for body text and has been particularly popular in fine book printing. Perpetua was released with characters for the Greek alphabet and a matching set of titling capitals for headings.
Sabon is an old-style serif typeface designed by the German-born typographer and designer Jan Tschichold (1902–1974) in the period 1964–1967. It was released jointly by the Linotype, Monotype, and Stempel type foundries in 1967. The design of the roman is based on types by Claude Garamond, particularly a specimen printed by the Frankfurt printer Konrad Berner. Berner had married the widow of a fellow printer Jacques Sabon, the source of the face's name, who had bought some of Garamond's type after his death. The italics are based on types designed by a contemporary of Garamond's, Robert Granjon. It is effectively a Garamond revival, though a different name was chosen as many other modern typefaces already carry this name.
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".
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.
Jan van Krimpen was a Dutch typographer, book designer and type designer. He worked for the printing house Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé. He also worked with Monotype in England, who issued or reissued many of his designs outside the Netherlands.
Monotype Grotesque is a family of sans-serif typefaces released by the Monotype Corporation for its hot metal typesetting system. It belongs to the grotesque or industrial genre of early sans-serif designs. Like many early sans-serifs, it forms a sprawling family designed at different times.
A Tally of Types is a book on typography authored by the type designer Stanley Morison. It was first published in 1953, and showcases significant typeface designs produced during Morison's tenure at the Lanston Monotype Corporation for their hot-metal typesetting machines during the 1920s and 1930s in England.
Metro is a sans-serif typeface family created by William Addison Dwiggins and released by the American Mergenthaler Linotype Company from 1929 onwards.
A headline...reads "Real Dutch Types"...These fonts resemble those given by Fell to the Oxford Press, and in cut belong to the 17th century. Their provenance I do not know. Although heavy, they retain considerable vivacity of line and have great capabilities when used with taste.
This typeface was destined primarily for the German market. According to a manager at Monotype, "this typeface was designed to appeal to those who have a weakness for Fraktur."
[A] pleasing degree of condensation ... gives increased legibility by its increased x-height and at the same time conserves space. These advantages give wide scope for ... much of the bookwork of today.
The page [is] set in Monotype Ehrhardt, a compact fount with short descenders ... to accommodate the maximum possible amount of text matter consistent with the degree of legibility necessary
The crisp, relatively narrow and extraordinarily 'large appearing' style of letter which the Monotype corporation revived and named Ehrhardt is, in the opinion of some authorities, the most important new book face since Times New Roman, and it has already been chosen for a number of noteworthy publications in England and in America
That it was Pierpont himself who was central to this drive for quality is made abundantly clear by the abrupt changes that are seen after his retirement in 1937. All the types produced during the brief period before the Second World War, although they naturally have many fine features, are more or less flawed. Monotype Joanna is crudely drawn by comparison with the original type…Ehrhardt is also crudely drawn compared with its predecessors, and its incongruous figures - which are quite wrong for its place and period - were adapted from those of Imprint. Similarly, the figures for Van Dijck are those of Bembo (which in their turn seem to be derived from Plantin) and their failure to match the delicate serif treatment of the type itself is painfully apparent.
Ehrhardt, the default typeface for OWCs, has a very hairy asterisk that fills in at small sizes
On Ehrhardt:
Ehrhardt digitisations:
On other Kis/Janson revivals:
On Van Dijck: