Isabel, contact The Metropolitian Museum of Art. I don't know the site name but it might be www.metmuseum.org, they do a bang-up job of using text panels and they never use Arial. I bet a designer their would be glad to help you.

A personal recommendation, then.: The marvellous, fabulous 'Whitney', by Tobias Frere-Jones, an institutional typeface for the Whitney Museum, New York, maybe.?

I was going to recommend looking at ATF specimen books from the turn of the century*, but they I saw that you're in the UK... What about FF Bau?

* Wasn't photography invented in the late 19th century?

Whatever you choose, resists the temptation to make it so legible as to remove all character, while avoiding a dreamy fall into too much character at the expense of clarity.

hhp

do you mean nineteenth century photography, isabel?

in that case, maybe consider so-called 'romantic' faces like bulmer and walbaum; slab serifs (clarendon); and early grots (Caslon's Egyptian from the font bureau). and there's a whole world of victorian display faces for titling etc.

let me know if you'd like more info on any of these.

sorry for lack of links.

if budget permits, check out the FB caslon egyptian. mmm.

FB caslon egyptian Caslon's Egyptian (2001).pdf (79.9 k)

Photography was invented in the early 19th century, by means of simultaneous developments among a number of researchers (Daguerre, Herschel, Niepce, Talbot) who were all exploiting Schulze's 1727 discovery of silver nitrate darkening on exposure to light.

The French government considered the invention so important that they bought Niepce and Daguerre's patent(s) and put them in the public domain.

The first book containing photos was Talbot's "The Pencil of Nature" (1846).

Many further big technical breakthroughs in portability didn't come until the early 20th century. Portable flash photography (developed in large part by my great-grandfather, George R Lawrence); the 35mm camera in 1925 (Barnack) was another huge advance in portability; and then faster films made it possible to do away with the flash altogether. Then you got color, and the Polaroid, all before 1950.

Any museum/gallery using Arial for exhibit labels didn't have a decent typographer involved in their development. I'd agree with most of the above suggestions, except that stuff like Bulmer and Walbaum is probably not best for readability under sub-optimal conditions (which exhibits usually are, in my experience).

Personally, I'd go with a good humanist sans serif, if the client is hung up on sans serifs.

T

Thanks for all the info, really helpful.

Perhaps I should first clear something up, I wasn't really very clear in my first post. I was refering to various artists who had photographed /illustrated 18th century culture for the exhibition, I didn't mean to say that it was photography from the 18th century. Wasn't very clear sorry.

Anyway, I have been looking at using a serif for the header text and a sans serif for the body text. Most books I have been reading through, (mostly page layout) recommend the opposite. Would I be making a mistake attempting this?

Anyway I will experiment with your suggestions and see how it sits with a Serif header. Something with small, subtle serifs? I originally wanted something from the 18th century, but now I am searching further a field, after little success.

Thanks

> The brief states I must use "Arial"

Slightly off-topic, but any "brief" that tells you what font to use is not a good sign for how the project will go. If they "know" what font they want, why don't they just set it themselves� after all, it's all just done in the computer�

> Would I be making a mistake attempting this?

The more body text you have, the more sans is a bad idea.

But for the heading, simply figure out the flavor you want.
Sans and serif give different flavors, but functionally they're both fine for headings.

"Use only sans for heading" is naive Modernism.

hhp

Personally, I'd avoid sans if you can. I think it'd seem a bit incongruous. And, if the museum uses Arial (unwisely) everywhere else, the sans's character will pop more in that context. Also, if the focus is 18th century culture, I'd go with something period-specific that seems, to the average viewer, more related.

geraint, is Caslon's Egyptian for sale on Font Bureau's site? I can't find it.

I'd recommend Kent Lew's Whitman, for a variety of non-historical reasons, but it doesn't have a bold italic, which I imagine you'd need in a museum setting. (Check it out anyway, 'cause it's great.)

hi chris,

i'm told by font bureau that caslon's egyptian is available as part of their studio library. before that, it was exclusive to red herring magazine.

for more info contact Sam Berlow: sberlow[at]fontbureau[dot]com

What about Linotype Univers Condensed Regular ... for everything in the interior signage system!

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S�ren O