SABON:The roman typefaces of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries emulated classical calligraphy. The concept of adhering to manuscript models was the basis of the first 300 years of type design, and typefaces designed during this period are referred to as Old Style. This style of font developed by Renaissance typographers replaced the Black letter style of type. Based on ancient Roman inscriptions, these fonts are generally characterized by low contrast between thick and thin strokes, bracketed serifs, and a left-leaning axis or stress. There are two groups of Old Style typefaces: Venetian (Renaissance) and Garalde (Baroque).
-Old Style Characteristics:
-minimal variation of thick and thin strokes
-small, coarse serifs, often with slightly concave bases
-small x-heights.
Other Fonts from Old Style classification: Calisto, Palatino, Bembo, Garamond, Centaur
World happenings in 1964:
World Statistics:
-Population: 3.276 billion
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (US)
-U.S. Supreme Court rules that congressional districts should be roughly equal in population (Feb. 17).
-Jack Ruby convicted of murder in slaying of Lee Harvey Oswald; sentenced to -death by Dallas jury (March 14)
-Three civil rights workers—Schwerner, Goodman, and Cheney—murdered in Mississippi (June). Twenty-one arrests result in trial and conviction of seven by federal jury.
-Nelson Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment in south Africa for opposing apartheid (June 11).
-Congress approves Gulf of Tonkin resolution after North Vietnamese torpedo boats allegedly attack US destroyers (Aug. 7).
-Khrushchev is deposed; Kosygin becomes premier and Brezhnev becomes first secretary of the Communist Party (October). Background: Rulers of Russia since 1533
-President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy issues Warren Report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
-The Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.
-China detonates its first atomic bomb. Background: nuclear weapons
-Olympic games in Tokyo broadcast worldwide by satellite.
-US Surgeon General warns against cigarette smoking.
-First Ford Mustang produced.
-Zambia, Malta independent from UK.
-Major earthquake ("Good Friday Earthquake") hits Alaska.
Other fonts designed by Jan Tschichold: Transit (1931), Saskia (1931/1932), Zeus (1931)
History of Jan Tschichold & Sabon:
Jan Tschichold was the son of a provincial signwriter, and he was trained in calligraphy. This artisan background and calligraphic training set him apart from almost all other noted typographers of the time, since they had inevitably trained in architecture or the fine arts. Tschichold's artisan background may explain why he never worked with handmade papers and custom fonts as many typographers did, preferring instead to use stock fonts on a careful choice from commercial paper stocks. After the election of Hitler in Germany, all designers had to register with the Ministry of Culture. After Tschichold took up a teaching post in Munich at the behest of Paul Renner, both he and Tschichold were denounced as "cultural Bolshevists". In March 1933, Tschichold and his wife were arrested,d uring the arrest, Soviet posters were found in his flat, casting him under suspicion of collaboration with communists. All copies of Tschichold's books were seized by the Gestapo. After six weeks a policeman somehow found him tickets for Switzerland, and he and his family managed to escape Nazi Germany in August 1933. Apart from short visits to England he lived the rest of his life in Switzerland.
Tschichold had converted to Modernist design principles in 1923 after visiting the first Weimar Bauhaus exhibition. He became a leading advocate of Modernist design: first with an influential 1925 magazine supplement; then a 1927 personal exhibition; then with his most noted work Die neue Typographie. This book was a manifesto of modern design, in which he condemned all fonts but sans-serif (called 'Grotesk' in Germany). He also favoured non-centered design (on title pages), and codified many other Modernist design rules. He advocated the use of standardized paper sizes for all printed matter, and made some of the first clear explanations of the effective use of different sizes and weights of type in order to quickly and easily convey information. Although Die neue Typographie remains a classic, He later condemned it as too extreme. He also went so far as to condemn Modernist design in general as being authoritarian and inherently fascistic. Between 1947-1949 Tschichold lived in England where he oversaw the redesign of 500 paperbacks published by Penguin Books, leaving them with a standardized set of typographic rules, the Penguin Composition Rules. In working for a firm that made cheap mass-market paperbacks, he was following a line of work - in cheap popular culture forms (e.g. film posters) - that he had always pursued during his career. His abandonment of Modernist principles meant that, even though he was living in Switzerland after the war, he was not at the centre of the post-war Swiss International Typographic Style.
Sabon:
One of the finest modern adaptations of the garamond model, Jan Tschichold's Sabon stands as the culmination of a hugely influential typographic career in which type design developed alongside book typography and critical writing. It is named for the punchcutter and type founder Jakob Sabon, who is credited with bringing the garamond types originating with Plantin or Granjon into use in Frankfurt, thus introducing the Garamond model into German printing. Sabon is far more than a literal revival, since it incorporates characteristics drawn from the different sizes of the garamonds to form one consistent and very 20th-century interpretation of the ideas that they embody.
Tschichold designed Sabon to be a typeface that would give the same reproduction on both Monotype and Linotype systems.The typeface is frequently described as a Garamond revival. Sabon was jointly released by Stempel, Linotype, and Monotype foundries. It was used early after its release by Bradbury Thompson to set the Washburn College Bible. Sabon was also used as the typeface in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church (United States), as well as all of that church's secondary liturgical texts (such as the Book of Occasional Services and Lesser Feasts and Fasts). A "Sabon Next" was later released by Linotype as an 'interpretation' of Tschichold's original Sabon. This elegant, highly readable typeface is excellent for sophisticated uses ranging from book design to corporate identity.
Quote from Jan Tschichold:
"Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy."-Jan Tschichold
Sources Cited:
Online: Wikipedia, Adobe Font Classifications Library,Thinking with type
Book: "The Complete Typographer (2nd edition)" Author: Will Hill
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