Typophile

Alternative to Benton Modern Four

Russell Castley...

Hi,

I'm after an alternative to Benton Modern Four (below) as it's too expensive to purchase in our budget. Does anybody know of anything that's as close as possible and a bit cheaper?

Thanks!

What does it cost? The FB website doesn’t state a price.

I've emailed them to find out. I'm basing the cost on Benton Modern Display and just want to see if there's a cheaper alternative. Unfortunately, nobody wants to spend money nowadays so I'm just looking at ways to bring the cost down, no matter how small!

New Century Schoolbook and the similarly named Century Schoolbook and Schoolbook come to mind.

Other Clarendon-style fonts that are similar include: News No. 2, Clarion, ITC Century, and Century 725.

Happy hunting....

Thanks.

For those that are interested, here's what Benton Modern would cost:

Complete family (16 styles, 2-5 user license): $1920
Two styles (2-5 user license): $320

They don't do a single user license - works out quite expensive!

A font may be “up-graded” (or is it “down-graded”?!) by applying a small amount of Stroke in applications such as InDesign.
That would make Century Expanded look quite like Benton Modern Four.
However, proper foundry grading is superior—as can be seen from this before-and-after demonstration:

Captured from web.archive.org on 24 Oct 2014. view this capture