Garamond

For other uses, see Garamond (disambiguation).

Garamond
CategorySerif
ClassificationGaralde
Old-style
Designer(s)Claude Garamond
Also:
Robert Granjon
Jean Jannon
Shown hereAdobe Garamond Pro (regular style based on Garamond's work; italic on the work of Robert Granjon)

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.

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.

Following an eclipse in popularity in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, many modern revival faces in the Garamond style have been developed. 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.[1] 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.[2][3][4] 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.[5][6]

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. The most common digital font named Garamond is Monotype Garamond. Developed in the early 1920s and bundled with Microsoft Office, it is a revival of Jannon's work.

  1. ^ "Just what makes a Garamond a Garamond?". Linotype. Archived from the original on 8 November 2023. Retrieved 11 December 2015.
  2. ^ Johnson, Alfred F. (1936). "Sources Of Roman And Italic Types Used By English Printers In The Sixteenth Century". The Library. Series 4. XVII (1): 70–82. doi:10.1093/library/s4-XVII.1.70.
  3. ^ Carter, Matthew (1985). "Galliard: A Revival of Types of Robert Granjon". Visible Language. 19 (1): 77–98. Archived from the original on 30 December 2017. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
  4. ^ Amert 2012, p. 21.
  5. ^ Phil Baines; Andrew Haslam (2005). Type & Typography. Laurence King Publishing. pp. 50–51. ISBN 978-1-85669-437-7.
  6. ^ Mosley, James (1960). "New Approaches to the Classification of Typefaces". The British Printer (Reprinted for the United States House Committee on the Judiciary).