When in Doubt, Set it in Caslon…

(Sorry, to mutch brandy today…)

I can’t even spell… ;-(

Great-uncle Charlie was in good company. Stanley Morison was a C.O. during WWI as well, and his gift to typography is the most ubiquitous of TrueType fonts, Times New Roman.

I'll be banned from this forum if I advise you to use Times, but you might take a look at Perpetua, also available as a TrueType font. It's roughly contemporary (1928), and it's the work of another English iconoclast, Eric Gill. (Full disclosure: Some designers avoid Gill's work because of his bizarre private life.)

Mr Hardy, that sounds like a fascinating and worthy project. It may be of interest to more people and institutions than you might expect. (The Imperial War Museum comes to mind.) My cousin did a similar project with letters sent home from family members and friends who were serving with Canadian forces during the Second World War.

You say that you can’t afford a professional typeface. Here are a question and a suggestion.

The question is: what typefaces are available to you on whatever system you are presently using? The experts on Typophile (I’m not an expert) may be able to help you better if they know what you have at hand.

The suggestion is: if you think that you may be doing other such projects in the future, it might be worthwhile to purchase a typeface to use for them. The price may not be as high as you think. For example, someone suggested Perpetua; Monotype (at www.fonts.com) sells the Perpetua Complete Family Pack for $121 in Canadian dollars; that would be about £68. That gives you standard (Roman), italic, bold, and bold italic.

Good luck with your project! We would be interested in knowing what your final choice is.

Jim Tubman
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
"The Stampede City"

Thanks to you all for your comments. I can see Perpetua has good credentials for my idea - and Gill's "Lifestyle" avoids the establishment feel :) .

You can't live in the UK and shun Gill's work -- Gill Sans is almost as all-pervasive as Helvetica here!

My currently available serif faces are;

TNR (well, yeah!)
Linux Libertine (available with genuine small caps, which is something at least)
Liberation serif
Gentium (wouldn't suit a book, I think?)
Cardo (too venetian?)
Lido STF
MgOpen Canonica -- this is one of four free Magenta fonts; they look like copies of more famous fonts (Helvetica, Optima, Avant Garde, Times).

You will probably have guessed I am a linux user. With the exception of Frantisek Storm's contribution they're a bit of a motley crew I admit, so it wouldn't hurt to look at a decent quality addition.

Unfortunately, I think that Open Baskerville is still at a too early stage...

Mr Hardy, if you are a Linux user, you are probably undaunted by the prospect of installing the TeX system on your machine. You don’t have to use TeX to take advantage of the fonts that come with it. The list of those fonts can be found at http://www.tug.org/fontname/html/Standard-PostScript-fonts.html

If you don’t want that hassle, have a peek at Latin Modern:

http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/fonts/lm.zip

It is basically Knuth’s Computer Modern in OpenType, with a comprehensive set of diacritics added for all the European languages that use the Latin alphabet.

Computer/Latin Modern is not too popular with the Typophile crowd (for completely valid reasons) and is really designed for mathematical and scientific work, but it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at it.

All that said, the suggestion of Perpetua still looks good to me.

Jim Tubman
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
"The Stampede City"

Thank you Jim (BTW my name is Paul)

I used LaTeX to type my wife's MSc dissertation (sans serif, as specified by the Univ) so I have that option available, but I have had a play with Perpetua on the vendor sites & it does look rather good. I find myself leaning that way...

PublishingMojo: it seems the design community had more scruples than the Church of England in this area, as the CoE used Gill Sans quite widely until very recently!

Thanks for the everyone's help -- I feel the Perpetua suggestion is calling to me.

For something a little more "out there" you could try Gill's Joanna:

http://www.fonts.com/FindFonts/Detail.htm?pid=243306&/cgi-bin/MsmGo.exe?...

Times (not Times New Roman) is bundled with XFree and URW Palladio L is bundled with Ghostscript.

"Times (not Times New Roman) is bundled with XFree .."

You're absolutely right but I have the MS webcore fonts including TNR & Arial from a legit source. I added them because my family are luke-warm about the linux thing.

Well my children are pretty sanguine, my wife is more sceptical. But hey, she can use the laptop! :)

Let me come down on the anti side with Perpetua, for setting text. In Metal, the 14-point master was considered OK, other sizes, no. When first photocomp then digital type became the norm, Perpetua suffered; no attempt was made to adjust the fonts for the different printing technology. The possible exception would be if all you are going to print will come off a laser or ink-jet printer -- i.e., no offset printing will be done. If your lasers look fine -- not too thin -- then you are safe on that issue.

Moving from the purely technical to the aesthetic, many of us don't consider Perpetua a good font for text. Gill's two best known fonts for text are Joanna and Pilgrim, with the latter being the best. Having said that, there has always been a faction that liked Perpetua for text, as well as the side that thought it dreadful. Whatever your personal feelings, one aspect of a *professional* designer is to consider how your decisions affect an audience. Be aware there are decidedly strong feelings about Perpetua.

I would add that you can do a wonderful book with just two fonts, a roman and an italic. Purchase price for two fonts, if that is a factor, is quite small these days. As to free fonts, you will need the advice of others; I am afraid I don't know much about free fonts, save those bundled with Adobe software.

It is always hard to pick a typeface without reading the material. Given your description of the man, his time, and the project, I would take a long look at Matthew Carter's Miller, an modern implementation/interpretation of the Scotch Romans. If the purchase price -- about U.S. $70 for two fonts -- is too high, then you are back to selecting from the myriad of free fonts out there. I would pick a simple font; let the words come through, they are far more important than the typeface.

Thank you charles_e.

Oddly I had wondered about Scotch Moderns, but as the more erudite people here hadn't mentioned them I said nuffin'. I will look into Miller as well (I was also coveting Storm's Hercules recently). In so far as I have a preference it is for type designed for digital use by newer designers, ahead of digitisations of established fonts.

If I am honest with myself I don't really need a typeface for this, but I probably just want one. What is abundantly clear is that the quality of the type will far exceed the quality of the typesetting & design.

But once again thank you to all for your comment and suggestions -- it is great to have access to such expertise.

Paul,

What is abundantly clear is that the quality of the type will far exceed the quality of the typesetting & design.

Yes, I should have added that the choice of typeface usually pales in importance beside the choices of the page size, line length, leading (linespacing) and margins. If you get these proportions in a pleasing manner, most would forgive using, say, Times Roman.

In so far as I have a preference it is for type designed for digital use by newer designers, ahead of digitisations of established fonts.

This one I don't quite understand. There are slavish digitizations of metal fonts, and for technical reasons, they usually give poor service. Too, there are designs of type that appear dated. Their design was of a period of time, and as that passed, so too did the attractiveness of the fonts. Revivals of such can be used, I suppose, in an effort to recall those times, but one is usually better served by other choices. There are fonts that seem to span generations, to span *fashion*.

There is also the phenomena of (graphic) designer boredom ("I've used that before"; or "I've used that too many times before"). This couples with typeface designers desire for "something new." IMSLTHO, new is fine as long as it doesn't get in the way of the primary purpose, which is still communication between a writer and an audience. But new is hard. Type is not art, you do not use type to ask an audience to view something in a new light. If you want to ask that of an audience, you must write the words yourself, perhaps changing not only the words, but the form by which you present them.

Good luck with it,

Charles

"There is also the phenomena of (graphic) designer boredom..."
Phenomena is plural, like media, criteria, and data. This data does not meet that criteria, which is really a phenomena for this media. Makes me cringe each time I see it. Sorry for the rant.

Here's a good Naskh font for free, having Arabic, Urdu & Persian support;
http://fonts.qurancomplex.gov.sa/download/UthmanTN1_Ver07.otf

I would definitely check out www.fontmarketplace.com. This is a legitimate outfit that probably has a special contract with Monotype to offer good fonts for very cheap money.

http://www.fontmarketplace.com/category/serif-fonts.aspx?show=all

For example you can get the excellent Joanna system (another font from the freaky-deeky Eric Gill) for under $20 USD:
http://www.fontmarketplace.com/font/joanna-family.aspx

BTW... Gentium would look lovely set in a book.

Mikey :-)

I'm an amateur as well as a GNU/Linux user. :) I recently laid out a magazine (Exhibit) using Scribus.

For financial reasons I also only had free fonts available. Originally I intended to use Gentium for my serif font but I found it too busy in body copy for my own taste, so I used Linux Libertine instead. I was mostly satisfied with it, I liked the small caps as well.

Thanks for the heads up on Open Baskerville, definitely something I'll keep my eye on.

In so far as I have a preference it is for type designed for digital use by newer designers, ahead of digitisations of established fonts.

This one I don’t quite understand.

That's because you're expecting a sensible rationale :) What I mean is if it came to a choice between buying from a large house who have a digitised classic, say, Bodoni or Garamond, or an independent foundry which made a new all-digital face which gave a nod to historic forms then I might lean to the latter, for purely emotional reasons. Call it the woolly, liberal well-meaning, small-producer-supporting viewpoint. On this side of the pond I could say "Guardian reader" & people would say "Ah, yes".

The folly of this position of course is that someone like Matthew Carter has covered both sides of this divide with work for Linotype, Bitstream, Carter & Cone etc. But then for me this is an indulgence, so I reserve the right to be irrational :)

I like Gentium but like rvavruch I would find it distracting in a book.

The folly of this position of course is that someone like Matthew Carter has covered both sides of this divide with work for Linotype, Bitstream, Carter & Cone etc. But then for me this is an indulgence, so I reserve the right to be irrational :)

Well, the other folly of the position is, with someone of Matthew Carter's age, in the metal era, working for a large foundry such as Linotype was all there was. When digital type became viable, he did break off & form a smaller foundry. Twice.

The three RDI's I know are Matthew, George Mackie, and the late Richard Eckersley. Richard was a "Guardian reader." I'm not going to start telling George Mackie stories, but he surely has his outrageous side(s). Matthew Carter is more of an enigma, at least to me, but I'd not confuse a sure hand with simple conventionality.

But I do understand. For several years, I avoided Miller because it was first recommended to me by someone whose instincts I did not like or trust. My loss.

-=®=-

I recommend Coldstyle by Ephemera, based on Oldstyle No.7.
With the subtle distress that is built in, it will evoke the letterpress typography of the era.
It is also relatively inexpensive.
I just took a glance at a copy of "The Common Cause", a suffrage publication, from 1912, and the text is printed in an "oldstyle" face.

I would also say that if you keep the layout simple and not overly ambitious, any putative lack of design skill will be offset by your good taste.

Well, may I say a big thank you for everyone's helpful comments. Having had to put Charles straight about my lack of reason, I now have to contend with accusations of good taste from Nick! I'm from Leeds, Nick -- need I say more? :)

I looked at all your suggestions, and thought a good deal. Coldstyle is of course a fantastic value proposition with roman, italic and small caps combined for $20. But in the end I have plumped for Miller, principally for this reason; a diary will of course have dates peppered throughout the text, and as far as I can tell it's the one with oldstyle numerals, which I think would be better.

I plan to buy the roman this month (26GBP via ITC which is very good) & start writing, adhering strictly to paragraph styles. Then next month I will get the italic & slot it in for the date tags. A brief unsystematic survey of Google's look inside feature suggests this is more contemporary for diary datelines than small caps, which seem to have been used later.

Thanks again to you all,
Paul

". A brief unsystematic survey of Google’s look inside feature"

..of course this should say Amazon's, not Google's. Apologies

> I plan to buy the roman this month (26GBP via ITC which is very good) [. . .] Then next month I will get the italic

I'll just point out that if you license directly from Font Bureau and get three or more styles at one time, you will be entitled to a discount of $5 USD per style. (I believe that's about £3 GBP right now.)

So you could invest in MillerText-Roman, Italic, and Roman Small Caps at once for $105 (~£63). Save by buying in bulk! ;-)

As an iconic American figure often said, "hold on thar."

But in the end I have plumped for Miller, principally for this reason; a diary will of course have dates peppered throughout the text, and as far as I can tell it’s the one with oldstyle numerals, which I think would be better.

As far as I know, the numbers in Miller are aligning, about 3/4 cap height. In this regard, similar to Monotype Bell. Nice enough, but not oldstyle.

Again as far as I know, the oldstyle numbers for Miller haven't been generally released. I bought the roman os figures from Carter & Cone after a few email exchanges. I believe M.C. said he hadn't yet drawn up oldstyle italic figures; I made something serviceable (with permission) for my own use.

I believe that generally, Miller is sold through FontBureau, and FontBureau has had other designers work on some aspects of the Miler family. Whether or not they have gotten around to the OS figs or not, I don't know. In any case, the OS figs would be an extra purchase in Type 1 format, or, if included in the OT format, it may be the OT format has a higher price.

There is nothing wrong with the shorter, aligning figures of Miller, unless, of course, you have your heart set on oldstyle. If you do, please check thoroughly on what is available, and at what price.

Edit:

One of the oddities of modern life is that I can offer to set the diary for you at no charge, but I cannot offer to lend you the fonts at no charge. I imagine this is a project you want to do yourself, but if it comes down to it, after all this internet talk, I'll offer the composition for free, from your keystrokes. Final product to be a PDF file, the same as we would give any publisher.