Typophile

Perpetua

jkstrong

Perpetua and I fell in love last year in Mrs. Bernardo's class. :) She is an elegant and graceful typeface, meant to flow across the page effortlessly.

Created by Eric Gill and released in 1932, Perpetua has a long story to tell. Along the way Gill didn't know for sure if this would be the typeface he would release. He had another offer from another company for her sister font, Felicity. The time, scheduling, and mismanagement worked out in Perpetua's favor.

Gill named her after Saint Perpetua who was one of the first martyrs to die for Christianity. It took nearly 8 years of meticulous work to to be able to produce such a beautiful typeface to suit such an honorable woman. In the end he produced a masterpiece that is still unique and timeless today.

Knowing Saint Perpetua's story as well as the sketchy business related background that went into this typeface, I had to share its story as well as choose it as my favorite.

Hrant H Papazian

Perpetua is definitely a guy (at least the Roman style).
The classiest one on the block though. August to the max.

BTW, we don't "invent" typefaces.

hhp

jkstrong

Oh, well in my research I found that Perpetua was named after a Christian martyr and its sister font, Felicity, that was being created at the same time by Gill (but I don't believe its ever been released) was named after a co-martyr of Perpetua's from the same time period, who met the same end. But I will look into the Roman style named after a man.
Thank you,
Jessica

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