Typophile

Calling all Specimen Books!

Jared Benson

Join us in the next collaborative gallery show at Typophile!

editor
Cheltenham Condensed, ATF Specimen Book, 1912, p.201 - Contributed by Tanya Sprowl

lemon
Century Expanded, ATF Specimen Book, 1912, p.254 - Contributed by Tanya Sprowl

* Specimen Book Poetry *


A collaborative collection of specimen book "type haikus", scanned from actual antique type specimen books. Crawl through your type catalogues and specimen books and email us your favorite scans for an upcoming gallery show here on Typophile!

Please be sure to include full credits for each submission, including title, publication date, typeface, and page number.

tsprowl

I see them fine. I had decided to scan for continuous tone in order to preserve the discolour (in its current state) and any small smudges. those aren't halos, just the shading of the book laying at rest on the scanner. it would be lost as a gif.

Hrant H Papazian

No, I didn't mean the background gradation, I meant the "ripples" around the letterform, which are JPEG lossiness artefacts. Our gammas are probably way different. Anyway, if you want to keep a nice gradation and you want to get rid of the halos, then you'll have to accept even larger file sizes (and probably resort to PNG).

hhp

bieler

Alastair Johnston did an entire book on the literature of nineteenth-century typefounders' specimens: Alphabets to Order.

The specimens aren't well presented (more often just as text) but it is a very thorough examination. Still in print from Oak Knoll.

Hrant H Papazian

Great idea!
(Please use GIF, those full-color JPEG halos are horrible.
Plus if you Posterize, you'll get much smaller sizes.)


hhp

Captured from web.archive.org on 14 Oct 2013. view this capture