4type.org

Justin Howes Memorial Lecture | 28 May 2009

Genuine Imitations
Matthew Carter’s talk at Conway Hall in Red Lion Square (Holburn, cent­ral London) was inform­at­ive, inter­est­ing and ended with some under­stand­ably unanswered ques­tions. He didn’t dis­ap­point in mak­ing a strong case for the use of revival type in cur­rent typo­graphy, dis­cuss­ing his type designs for Yale University (shown at right), Newsweek and The New York Times, show­ing samples of his recent black­let­ter typeface, FrakturSix-NYT, amongst oth­ers. His remarks about his pro­cess of mak­ing type were frank, some­times self-deprecating and seemed to be groun­ded by a thor­ough under­stand­ing of the need to ‘build on a solid found­a­tion’ to find the best poten­tial for new type design.

Since Carter’s recent revival type (2004) for Yale hasn’t yet been made avail­able for gen­eral or licensed use, it isn’t seen in this wider con­text. Carter’s black­let­ter design for the NY Times is widely seen within this paper’s cir­cu­la­tion but it’s also pro­pri­et­ary and not sold for other uses. Both of these type reviv­als fol­low recent trends for major type com­mis­sions, which doesn’t lessen the qual­ity of the work, but it does mean the use of these typefaces is very limited.

Matthew Carter’s Yale revival type, like Stanley Morison’s 1929 Monotype release of Bembo, ref­er­ences the text typeface cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldus Manutius’ print­ing of the book De Aetna. And, though Carter dis­cussed sev­eral other type reviv­als (includ­ing Miller, a pop­u­lar revival of 19th cen­tury Scotch Roman, Century, Big Caslon and Vincent, a typeface based on a 1792 Bible typeface that was even­tu­ally com­mis­sioned as a wider range for Newsweek), his design of Yale’s revival typeface, given Bembo’s his­tory and pop­u­lar use, was the ‘star’ of his lecture.

Monotype notes this about Bembo (which was the typeface used by Yale before Carter’s recent revival type was made): ‘Since the late 15th cen­tury, Bembo has been among the most uni­ver­sally admired – and imit­ated – type designs ever created’.

This was writ­ten in 2005 to pro­mote a new release of Bembo Book, which addressed weight and styl­istic vari­ances ques­tioned in the 1929 release of Bembo by Monotype, as well as later ver­sions of this face by this foundry, Linotype, Adobe and scores of other foundries, large and small. None of these many type reviv­als, from most crit­ical view­points, seem to get closer to what’s widely per­ceived to be the ‘feel’ of this type. Even though this may not be an entirely fair assess­ment or expect­a­tion, this has been a long-standing typo­graphic ques­tion: can the gap between what is evid­ently seen and admired in the print­ing of De Aetna’s type – in con­trast to its many reviv­als – be bet­ter resolved?

The 15th cen­tury print­ing of De Aetna (1496) is sig­ni­fic­ant. Less than 40 years after Gutenberg’s fam­ous Blackletter Bible, this Roman type is cut by Francesco Griffo. The qual­ity of his work is imme­di­ately recog­nised, but the wider use of Roman type, in terms of  ital­ics, min­is­cules and cap­it­als was just about to enter into a state of rapid change. As noted in Counterpunch, this change was led, in cer­tain respects, by punch­cut­ters work­ing in another part of Europe:

‘…in the 16th cen­tury – but not before – we begin to see fonts joined by a con­sist­ent, uni­fy­ing notion of their form. Later, the concept of a typeface became enlarged to include vari­ant char­ac­ter sets: ital­ics, small cap­it­als, bold, light and more. Around 1900, typefaces became com­mod­it­ies, with trade names to help identify and sell their product. “Garamond” is a product of the 20th cen­tury, not the 16th.’

Griffo’s type would have been clas­si­fied by Monotype in 1929 as an Aldine Old Style face. It was matched by Stanley Morison with a Venetian italic, which is the work of Giovanni Tagliente, a mas­ter cal­li­grapher, let­ter cut­ter and printer. Understanding that Bembo’s  tra­di­tional form is, in real­ity, a know­ing (if well edu­cated and care­fully planned) mix­ture of at least two or even three (for its numer­als) dif­fer­ent his­tor­ical mod­els, anyone’s view of its ‘true’ form can change. Possibly, part of what’s admired in Bembo is not only its beauty and pre­ci­sion – but also a few quirks, vari­ances and even ‘inaccuracies’.

‘Accuracy is not the truth.’

– Henri Matisse

Carter ref­er­ences Matisse’s words in the gen­eral con­text of mak­ing revival type (and, he adds that Matisse wasn’t refer­ring to type when he made this state­ment). But it’s not too dif­fi­cult to ima­gine that in the pro­cess of decod­ing and rein­ter­pret­ing what works on a prin­ted page of a more than 500 year-old book like De Aetna, a few ‘pleas­ing inac­curacies’ in its subtle details must have been noticed. The bal­ances, grace and read­ab­il­ity of this text type are best stud­ied in their actual scale on the prin­ted page, so hav­ing a pristine copy of it avail­able from Yale’s rare book col­lec­tion was very for­tu­nate. But, it’s clear that there’s more to it than this. Carter likens his­tor­ical type­forms to musical scores: ‘Performing is reviv­ing either a musical or a type form, and both are appre­ci­ated within the con­text of our present time. In this sense, I’m a ‘present­ist’, he notes.

Type reviv­als, in Carter’ view, are more a trans­la­tion than an exact repro­duc­tion of a prior form. It’s dif­fi­cult to dis­agree with him in this. Carter has con­sist­ently warned (in inter­views in 2005, in this lec­ture and on other occa­sions) that pas­tiche can enter into type reviv­als by ‘miss­ing the need’ for inter­pret­a­tion. In this sense, fault is real­ised by tim­idly ‘cower­ing’ before the giants of well craf­ted type. In con­sid­er­ing Bembo’s let­ter cut­ters (Griffo, Tagliente and oth­ers) as ‘giants’, some of their type’s last­ing beauty is real­ised as a trans­la­tion of the best work of Italian scribes. Everyone ‘trans­lates’ in mak­ing the best of this type, it seems.

‘…the cen­tury now draw­ing to a close [the 2oth cen­tury] was marked by an unpre­ced­en­ted wave of revivals.’

– Dmitry Kirsanov

This was writ­ten 11 years ago, but many design journ­als also note this about new type devel­op­ment in the early 21st cen­tury. Typographers as diverse as Justin Howes and  Jean François Porchez have developed revival typefaces, at times influ­enced by a desire to pro­duce a ‘strict’ inter­pret­a­tion. This bal­an­cing between the inter­pret­ive and the ‘his­tor­ic­ally pre­cise’ nature of new type devel­op­ment per­sists. However, all con­cerned with pro­du­cing reviv­als likely agree the worst pos­sib­il­ity in this would res­ult from a dys­func­tion­ally slav­ish attempt to ‘copy’. This is part of what Carter refers to in this lec­ture as ‘pastiche’.

Carter addressed this shared con­cern about mak­ing a new revival type ‘bet­ter’ than pre­vi­ous ver­sions by openly accept­ing this ‘stand­ing on the shoulders of giants’ per­spect­ive. I’m cer­tain this helps in many ways, but in terms of Carter’s need to inter­pret, design and adapt these related type­forms (unless he’s dis­covered other resources for his­tor­ical mod­els), it also helps to con­sider this type’s time and place to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what’s miss­ing from the book De Aetna as a formal guide.

Plus, new digital typefaces require a much lar­ger basic char­ac­ter set com­pli­men­ted by soph­ist­ic­ated kern­ing pairs (Carter also warns in his lec­ture that mod­ern kern­ing pairs can some­times mask basic flaws in type design), so imple­ment­ing all of these much-needed adapt­a­tions for this new type – and attempt­ing to keep its ‘true’ char­ac­ter – must have been daunt­ing. Undoubtably, it was fun, at times, too.

I feel com­pelled to add that there was a lot to be gained from this lec­ture by Matthew Carter that had noth­ing to do with Yale’s typeface (some of which is high­lighted in the nar­row column at right). I enjoyed the lec­ture and found it to be thought-provoking and worthwhile.

But in con­sid­er­ing this revival type’s cur­rent use for Yale, the impres­sion (in attend­ing this lec­ture and present­a­tion) was a bit like admir­ing the types once used by private presses. There is a ‘look, don’t touch or use’ qual­ity to it. It is clear from the samples I’ve seen since, Carter based his italic for Yale’s typeface more on Tagliente’s than Griffo’s work. Stanley Morison ori­gin­ally determ­ined, appar­ently (dur­ing the research for Monotype’s cut of Bembo italic) that the ori­ginal italic cut by Griffo fea­tured an inor­din­ately large set of lig­at­ures – which would’ve made it dif­fi­cult to adapt for hand com­pos­ing sticks and print­ing meth­ods of the time.

As I’ve already noted, Carter made it clear in this lec­ture his view of type revival was based on inter­pret­a­tion (and valid research) more than ‘stick­ing to’ an exact re-creation of any his­tor­ical form. Questioning the Yale typeface’s his­tor­ical ref­er­ence for its italic, at least at this talk, seemed to be a moot point.

In terms of Carter’s design being pro­duced for Yale University exclus­ively, I sup­pose it’s fair to note this kind of exclus­iv­ity was the con­text in which Griffo’s type was ori­gin­ally pro­duced for Aldus Manutius’s Press. Given how rare and valu­able a copy of De Aetna was in its day, per­haps, once again, it’s the most prac­tical way to breathe new life into it now.

Recommended texts

Type spaces: in-house norms in the typo­graphy of Aldus Manutius by Peter Burnhill

‘Non-arbitrary’: English excerpt of a longer German text by Roland Reuß

Related links

St Bride Library Event listing

Design museum entry for Matthew Carter

Washington Post inter­view with Matthew Carter

Big Caslon typeface Linotype link

Big Figgins type sample by Carter

James Mosley’s blog entry about Scotch Roman

Yale University typeface link

Carter & Cone Type Inc

Typefounders of London (good gen­eral info)