Rosemary Sassoon (born 1931 in the United Kingdom and currently residing in Busselton, Western Australia) is an expert in handwriting, particularly that of children. She designed the Sassoon series of typefaces, produced in collaboration with Adrian Williams, which are intended to be particularly legible for children and learners. [1] [2]
In 1988 she earned a PhD from the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading in Berkshire, England. [3] Sassoon's personal papers are held in the archives of University of London's Institute of Education. [3]
Optima is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf and released by the D. Stempel AG foundry, Frankfurt, West Germany in 1958.
Calligraphy is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious, and skillful manner".
Penmanship is the technique of writing with the hand using a writing instrument. Today, this is most commonly done with a pen, or pencil, but throughout history has included many different implements. The various generic and formal historical styles of writing are called "hands" while an individual's style of penmanship is referred to as "handwriting".
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than serif typefaces. They are often used to convey simplicity and modernity or minimalism. For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into these major groups: § Grotesque and § Neo-grotesque, § Geometric, § Humanist and § Other or mixed.
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".
In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Along with blackletter and roman type, it served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography.
Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.
Cursive is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionality and modern-day usage across languages and regions; being used both publicly in artistic and formal documents as well as in private communication. Formal cursive is generally joined, but casual cursive is a combination of joins and pen lifts. The writing style can be further divided as "looped", "italic", or "connected".
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.
Lucida is an extended family of related typefaces designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes and released from 1984 onwards. The family is intended to be extremely legible when printed at small size or displayed on a low-resolution display – hence the name, from 'lucid'.
Western calligraphy is the art of writing and penmanship as practiced in the Western world, especially using the Latin alphabet.
Lettering is an umbrella term that covers the art of drawing letters, instead of simply writing them. Lettering is considered an art form, where each letter in a phrase or quote acts as an illustration. Each letter is created with attention to detail and has a unique role within a composition. Lettering is created as an image, with letters that are meant to be used in a unique configuration. Lettering words do not always translate into alphabets that can later be used in a typeface, since they are created with a specific word in mind.
Oblique type is a form of type that slants slightly to the right, used for the same purposes as italic type. Unlike italic type, however, it does not use different glyph shapes; it uses the same glyphs as roman type, except slanted. Oblique and italic type are technical terms to distinguish between the two ways of creating slanted font styles; oblique designs may be labelled italic by companies selling fonts or by computer programs. Oblique designs may also be called slanted or sloped roman styles. Oblique fonts, as supplied by a font designer, may be simply slanted, but this is often not the case: many have slight corrections made to them to give curves more consistent widths, so they retain the proportions of counters and the thick-and-thin quality of strokes from the regular design.
Rudolf Koch was a German type designer, professor, and a master of lettering, calligraphy, typography and illustration. Commonly known for his typefaces created for the Klingspor Type Foundry, his most widely used typefaces include Neuland and Kabel.
Goudy Sans is a sans-serif typeface designed by Frederic Goudy around 1929–1931 and published by Lanston Monotype.
A reverse-contrast or reverse-stress letterform is a design in which the stress is reversed from the norm: a typeface or custom lettering where the horizontal lines are the thickest. This is the reverse of the vertical lines being the same width or thicker than horizontals, which is normal in Latin-alphabet writing and especially printing. The result is a dramatic effect, in which the letters seem to have been printed the wrong way round. The style invented in the early nineteenth century as attention-grabbing novelty display designs. Modern font designer Peter Biľak, who has created a design in the genre, has described them as "a dirty trick to create freakish letterforms that stood out."
Reginald "Reg" Piggott was a British book cartographer whose maps were known for their elegance, clarity, and distinctive italic script. His work was published by Cambridge University Press and The Folio Society among other presses. Early in his life, he was a campaigner for better handwriting and in 1957 organised a survey of British handwriting which drew over 25,000 responses and was subsequently published in book form. He advocated the use of a form of italic script to replace the civil service script widely used in Britain which he thought tended to illegibility when written at speed.
Alfred John Fairbank CBE was a British calligrapher, palaeographer and author on handwriting.
Semplicità is a sans-serif typeface of the geometric style. It was published by the Nebiolo type foundry of Turin, Italy from around 1928.
Patricia Lovett is a British scribe, calligrapher and illuminator from Kent. She is the author of several books and teaches calligraphy, illumination and manuscript skills in the UK and worldwide. She was chair of the Heritage Crafts Association between 2017 and 2022, having been vice-chair for several years previously and in 2013 was awarded an MBE for services to calligraphy and the protection of heritage crafts.