The many active engravers included Garamond himself, Granjon, Guillaume Le Bé, particularly respected for his Hebrew fonts, Pierre Haultin, Antoine Augereau (who may have been Garamond's master), Estienne's stepfather Simon de Colines and others. Many fonts were cut, some such as Robert Estienne's for a single printer's exclusive use, others sold or traded between them (increasingly over time). The period from 1520 to around 1560, encompassing Garamond's career, was an extremely busy period for typeface creation. This form was to appear in many fonts of the period, including Garamond's earlier ones, although by the end of his career he had switched to mostly using an M on the Roman capital model with a serif at top right. The designs copied Manutius's type even to the extent of copying the 'M' shown in De Aetna which, whether intentionally or due to a casting defect, had no serif pointing out of the letter at top right. The largest size "Gros-canon" (42.5pt) particularly became a "phenomenon" in Paris: never before had a roman type been cut in so large a size. These typefaces, with their "light colour and precise cut" were extremely influential and other Parisian printers immediately introduced copies. Īn event which was to particularly define the course of the rest of Garamond's career came starting on 6 September 1530, when the printer Robert Estienne began to introduce a set of three roman types adapting the single roman type used in De Aetna to a range of sizes. French typefounders of the 16th century assiduously examined Manutius's work (and, it is thought, De Aetna in particular) as a source of inspiration: Garamond's roman, italic and greek typefaces were all influenced by types used by Manutius. Among other details, this font popularised the idea that in printing the cross-stroke of the 'e' should be level instead of slanting upwards to the right like handwriting, something imitated in almost all type designs since. Historian Beatrice Warde has assessed De Aetna as something of a pilot project, a small book printed to a higher standard than Manutius' norm. This was first used in the book De Aetna, a short work by poet and cleric Pietro Bembo which was Manutius' first printing in the Latin alphabet. The roman designs of Garamond which are his most imitated were based on a font cut around 1495 for the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius by engraver Francesco Griffo. Its roman type was the model for Garamond's. Developed in the early 1920s and bundled with Microsoft Office, it is a revival of Jannon's work.ĭe Aetna, printed by Aldus Manutius in 1495. The most common digital font named Garamond is Monotype Garamond. In particular, many 'Garamond' revivals of the early twentieth century are actually based on the work of a later punchcutter, Jean Jannon, whose noticeably different work was for some years misattributed to Garamond. As a result, while "Garamond" is a common term in the printing industry, the terms "French Renaissance antiqua" and " Garalde" have been used in academic writing to refer generally to fonts on the Aldus-French Renaissance model by Garamond and others. However, although Garamond himself remains considered a major figure in French printing of the sixteenth century, historical research has increasingly placed him in context as one artisan punchcutter among many active at a time of rapid production of new typefaces in sixteenth-century France, and research has only slowly developed into which fonts were cut by him and which by contemporaries Robert Bringhurst commented that "it was a widespread custom for many years to attribute almost any good sixteenth-century French font" to Garamond. It is common to pair these with italics based on those created by his contemporary Robert Granjon, who was well known for his proficiency in this genre. Garamond's types followed the model of an influential typeface cut for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius by his punchcutter Francesco Griffo in 1495, and are in what is now called the old-style of serif letter design, letters with a relatively organic structure resembling handwriting with a pen, but with a slightly more structured, upright design.įollowing an eclipse in popularity in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, many modern revival faces in the Garamond style have been developed. Garamond-style typefaces are popular and particularly often used for book printing and body text. Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Adobe Garamond Pro (regular style based on Garamond's work italic on the work of Robert Granjon)
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