RE: Font Selection Process (Was: Fonts used in print)

["Dick Margulis " <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net>]

Rob,

First of all, let me add my kudos to Bruce's on your earlier post. Nicely done.

With regard to Caslon, it is the model on which Times Roman was built. Or rather Times Roman is a deconstruction of Caslon. The idea of Times Roman, other than mashing the metrics to maximize readability in a narrow newspaper column, was to provide letterforms that were familiar to readers of English (Caslon being the default text font on both sides of the pond for at least a couple of centuries) but to knock off any little idiosycratic bits (like the calligraphic top of the cap A) and regularize and smooth out the glyphs (making all corresponding stems identical, all corresponding serifs identical, etc.)

So we can think of Caslon as Times Roman with character.

But there are a lot of Caslons, and I try to look for one that still has decent-size ascenders and descenders, rather than going for any of the "new" cuttings.

Dick

"Domaschuk, Rob" <Robd -at- datalogics -dot- com> wrote:


>
>> an old adage among type-setters in Britain....
>
>Hmmm, considering I am from British Columbia that could (in part) explain my
>preference for Caslon.
>
>


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