Page 38 - final flipbook

Fonts from the original period of transitional typefaces include early on the "romain du
roi" in France, then the work of Pierre Simon Fournier in France, Fleischman and Rosart in

the Netherlands, Pradel in Spain and John Baskerville and Bulmer in England. Among more
recent designs, Times New Roman (1932), Perpetua, Plantin, Mrs. Eaves, Freight Text and
the earlier "modernised old styles" have been described as transitional in design.

Later 18th-century transitional typefaces in Britain begin to show influences of Didone

typefaces from Europe, described below, and the two genres blur, especially in type intended
for body text; Bell is an example of this.

Times New Roman, a modern example of a transitional serif design
Figure 2

c. Serif Didone

Didone, or modern, serif typefaces, which first emerged in the late 18th century, are

characterized by extreme contrast between thick and thin lines. These typefaces have a
vertical stress and thin serifs with a constant width, with minimal bracketing (constant
width). Serifs tend to be very thin, and vertical lines very heavy. Didone fonts are often

considered to be less readable than transitional or old-style serif typefaces. Period examples
include Bodoni, Didot, and Walbaum. Computer Modern is a popular contemporary
example. The very popular Century is a softened version of the same basic design, with

reduced contrast. Didone typefaces achieved dominance of printing in the early
nineteenth-century printing before declining in popularity in the second half of the century

and especially in the twentieth as new designs and revivals of old-style faces emerged.

In print, Didone fonts are often used on high-gloss magazine paper for magazines

such as Harper's Bazaar, where the paper retains the detail of their high contrast well, and
for whose image a crisp, "European" design of type may be considered appropriate. They
are used more often for general-purpose body text, such as book printing, in Europe. They

remain popular in the printing of Greek, as the 38Didot family were among the first to