Emerson (typeface)

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Monotype Emerson
EmersonSpecimen.png
Category Serif
Designer(s) Joseph Blumenthal
Foundry Monotype Corporation
Date released 1935
Variations Spiral

Emerson is a typeface designed by Joseph Blumenthal. In 1930, the type was cut by Louis Hoell at the Bauer Type Foundry in Frankfurt and named Spiral. Then in 1935, Stanley Morison recut the type, along with its italic, for the Monotype Corporation in England. The typeface's first appearance was in a special, private-press edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Nature, and so the Monotype version became known as Emerson. [1]

Typeface set of characters that share common design features

In typography, a typeface is a set of one or more fonts each composed of glyphs that share common design features. Each font of a typeface has a specific weight, style, condensation, width, slant, italicization, ornamentation, and designer or foundry. For example, "ITC Garamond Bold Condensed Italic" means the bold, condensed-width, italic version of ITC Garamond. It is a different font from "ITC Garamond Condensed Italic" and "ITC Garamond Bold Condensed", but all are fonts within the same typeface, "ITC Garamond". ITC Garamond is a different typeface from "Adobe Garamond" or "Monotype Garamond". There are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly.

Joseph Blumenthal was an American printer and publisher, typographer, and book historian. As founder of the Spiral Press, he was a well-known figure in the 20th-century fine-press movement, designing and printing work for prominent clients such as the poet Robert Frost. In 1952, the American Institute of Graphic Arts awarded him a medal for craftsmanship in printing. Blumenthal was also a self-taught historian of books and printing and wrote both anecdotal and more scholarly accounts of the book arts.

The Bauer Type Foundry was a German type foundry founded in 1837 by Johann Christian Bauer in Frankfurt am Main. Noted typeface designers, among them Lucian Bernhard, Konrad Friedrich Bauer, Walter Baum, Heinrich Jost, Imre Reiner, Friedrich Hermann Ernst Schneidler, Emil Rudolf Weiß, and Heinrich Wienyck, designed typefaces for the company.

Contents

Emerson can be recognised for its distinctive foot serifs on the lowercase a, d and u, and its wide capitals (especially the M). The typeface shares characteristics with the classic renaissance types, and its soft, blunt appearance was designed to suit photogravure reproduction. [2]

Photogravure printmaking technique

Photogravure is an intaglio printmaking or photo-mechanical process whereby a copper plate is grained and then coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high quality intaglio plate that can reproduce detailed continuous tones of a photograph.

Emerson in use

Emerson was used to set the 1946 Golden Encyclopedia, an illustrated children's encyclopedia published by Golden Press, New York.

Emerson in use Emersontext.jpg
Emerson in use

Availability

A version of Emerson recently became available as a typeface for use on computers from Nonpareil Type. [3] [4]

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Arial typeface

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Caslon typeface

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Cooper Black Ultra-bold serif typeface

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Bembo typeface

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Cheltenham (typeface) font, typeface

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Joanna (typeface) typeface designed by Eric Gill

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Centaur (typeface) typeface

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References

  1. "Spiral & Emerson: An Interview with Joseph Blumenthal". Archived from the original on 2011-07-17.
  2. "Old Emerson Typeface on Typophile.com".
  3. "Nonpareil Type". Nonpareil Type. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
  4. "Emerson Nonpareil Specimen" (PDF). Nonpareil Type. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-12-27.