I've been waiting for a digital "re-creation" of Fournier for some time and what little I've seen of Corundum I like a lot. Incidentally, I seem to recall that the tall capitals were part of Monotype's original hot metal version, and it was Francis Meynell of the Nonesuch Press who asked them for a version with shorter capitals.

It's an attractive font but I don't think I'd use it as a substitute for Fournier. It's heavier for one thing, and the italics lack the character of Fournier's - they are tighter, have a higher x-height, and are at less of a slant. Fournier's italics are much of why I use it, they are so beautiful and distinctive.

But it does look quite complete (altho where are the fractions???), and looks solve the HUGE Fournier caps/smallcaps problem.

Joshua Darden's Corundum types are not based on Monotype's Fournier typeface, but are based on Pierre-Simon Fournier's actual work. Joshua owns some Fournier specimens which he used as reference when developing Corundum.

We know Josh went back to original source material to re-think the Fournier look...somebody had to at some point and Josh was the designer worth waiting for, it seems...If Monotype were smart, they would recognize the need and get someone really good to carefully complete the weights of their version, offering both tall and regular caps...we still get new type families released every month with no bold or bold italic...how many years before Hoefler finishes bold and bold italic for Requiem? Do they mind restricting their market so much on the initial release? Can't understand that...

the v and z are so gorgeous in the italic! makes me wish i had one or the other in my name! and the rest is just lovely and feels very historic, and i just wish there were swash caps for it. Fournier must have made swash caps, hadn't he? wasn't that always done in old type? but some of the ornaments are dodgy aren't they? i suppose the pointing hands and arrows could be quite useful but i can't think of a time when i'd have a need for a serpent man or a sun suffering from indigestion.

if this is the Text can we reasonably expect there to be a headline version soon????

Do they mind restricting their market so much on the initial release?

Bear in mind that retail is only part of their oeuvre, which is driven by custom work for periodicals. One tends to do what is requested by clients, and use that as a barometer of what is viable, therefore I suspect that no publication has commissioned them to fill out that particular family. H&FJ are no slackers in creating mega families, so they have certainly not absconded that responsibility. But in one sense it seems to me they are more interested, in their retail projects, in cutting new territory, in hybrid/niche formats such as the numbers fonts, the two-part fonts, and the graded fonts. So filling out families with the usual weights is not a priority. Perhaps, after H&FJ has bought Monolino, their production staff will be able to attend to such details.

Sorry, this is Josh's thread. What do I think? I'm impressed by the respect for the original design, and the Pi fonts are awesome! Thumbs up for the Age of Enlightenment.

> they are more interested, in their retail projects, in cutting new territory

I have the opposite impression.

hhp

Well perhaps not new (being couched in history), but unusual for a digital era foundry.
Speaking of Requiem, there is the banded version with a variety of ends. Not too many fonts with that feature.
A suite of two-colour fonts? And not like the typical "outline with fill". What other foundries even have one offering like that? Well, some FontFonts. So perhaps not new territory, but a consolidation.
Numbers? Again, a "traditional sort" kind of idea, but no other digital era foundry has, AFAIK, developed new design packages in this genre.
And while the graded Mercury family may not be, strictly speaking, retail, it was developed for the news trade in general. That (grading) is an unusual idea, continuing the Poynter fonts idea. It's not the same as optical size, of course.