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Garamond humanist typeface10/2/2023 ![]() This felt ideal for me, a writer who struggles to put words down on the page. There’s an informality to the flow of words in these typefaces, as if they were merely jotted in the Notes app on your phone. For a long time I favored utilitarian sans-serifs like Avenir or Montserrat for writing. On the page, this is typically borne out in the form of serviceable, risk-averse prose where there could be something more. Unlike the Garamond Guy, I have found my self-confidence to often be in short supply, particularly in my writing pursuits. In our current age - one defined by sans-serif typography and spare, minimalist aesthetics that scan easily on a screen - that same style has a baroque vibe, an old-fashioned fanciness.īut we all need to feel a bit fancy sometimes. You can imagine Garamond registering as more casual to readers of the mid-16th century, given its penlike strokes. And the vibe of a typeface is likely to change over time as it’s juxtaposed with new trends. You can categorize a typeface by any number of technical elements, but its aesthetic and emotional impact often comes down to something ineffable - a vibe. Clients are rarely able to articulate exactly what they want, only what isn’t working. As a graphic designer, I spend hours each week scrolling through my font library in search of the perfect fit for each project. “You’re a Garamond man, huh?” the father-in-law says, beaming.) It’s unsurprising, then, that Garamond has developed an association with the most trite, surface-level aesthetics of bookish intellectualism, and is subsequently considered a bit gauche by those in the know. (In the sitcom “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” a character desperate to impress his type-A future father-in-law greets him at the airport with a sign printed in Garamond. There’s a stereotype associated with the sort of person who loves Garamond: The Garamond Guy, if you will, is irritatingly uptight, so certain of his own profundity that his words must be conveyed with the weight of a 500-year-old French typeface. And where some see elegance, others perceive fussiness. Their low x-height and fastidiously detailed strokes make for what many find a pleasant print-reading experience, but these features make them less legible on screens compared with their more uniform sans-serif compatriots. Garamonds are lovely, and yet they have a polarizing reputation. The italics tend to reveal some of their most idiosyncratic strokes, such as the loop on a lowercase “ k,” or the upward flick at the bottom of a lowercase “ h.” They have low “x-heights” - that’s the height of a lowercase letter like “e,” “a” and, obviously, “x” - and high crossbars, or horizontal strokes, on letters like “e.” Garamond’s strokes are widely varied and full of character - they were originally made, after all, to resemble handwriting. Their serifs - the little extra strokes on letters like “i” and “r” - are often sloped or slightly scooped. Whether designed by Garamond, Jannon or someone else, Garamonds share a few central characteristics. His typefaces, meticulously designed to resemble a more legible version of pen-and-ink handwriting, inspired a printer named Jean Jannon to create a similar type (also named after Garamond) in the early 17th century, eventually leading to a revival. Garamond lived and worked during a transitional period, when old-fashioned black-letter fonts were giving way to more modern Roman typefaces. Garamond is not just one typeface but, in fact, a group of them, whose origins trace back to 16th-century France, where they were created by a man named Claude Garamond. I’m speaking, of course, of delicate, refined Garamond. ![]() But what about those occasions that require the fine china of typography? There are the obvious choices: Times New Roman, reliable if bland Arial, crisp and austere Proxima Nova, clean and versatile. I cannot start any document - a novel, a letter, an invoice - without first clicking on the drop-down menu labeled “Font” and considering my options.
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