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Janson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the typeface. For other uses, seeJanson (disambiguation).
CategorySerif
ClassificationOld-style
Designer(s)Miklós Tótfalusi Kis
Chauncey H. Griffith
FoundryLinotype
Design based onNicholas Kis' Roman of 1685[citation needed]

Jansonis the name given to a set ofold-style seriftypefacesfrom theDutch Baroqueperiod, and modern revivals from the twentieth century.[1][2][3]Janson is a crisp, relatively high-contrast serif design, most popular for body text.

Janson is based on surviving matrices fromLeipzigthat were named forAnton Janson(1620–1687), a Leipzig-based printer and punch-cutter from the Netherlands who was believed to have created them. In 1954 Harry Carter and George Buday published an essay asserting that the designer of the Janson typeface was in fact aHungarian-Transylvanianschoolmaster andpunchcutter,Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis(1650–1702).[4][5]

Historical background

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Roman types from the Ehrhardt specimen. The larger sizes are more condensed than the smaller ones on which Ehrhardt and Janson are based.
Italic types from the Ehrhardt specimen

Miklós Kis,aTransylvanianProtestantpastor and schoolmaster, became deeply interested in printing after being sent to Amsterdam to help print a Hungarian Protestant translation of the Bible.[6][7]This was a period ofconsiderable prosperityfor the Netherlands and a time when its styles of printing were very influential across Europe, making it a centre for the creation of new typefaces.[5][8][9]He developed a second career as apunchcutter,an engraver of the punches used as a master for stamping matrices for casting metal type, selling his work to printers in the Netherlands and abroad. The style he worked in was based on French serif typefaces of the previous century, but with boosted x-height and higher stroke contrast, creating a higher-contrast, sharper effect.[10]It was later called the "Dutch taste"(goût hollandois), a term originating from the writings ofPierre Simon Fournierin the next century.[11]Kis is considered to have been one of the most talented engravers active during this period, and perhaps uniquely wrote about his work in later life, allowing greater insight into his work than other earlier engravers.[5]Kis also cut typefaces for other languages includingGreekandHebrewtypefaces.

Kis returned to Transylvania around 1689 and may have leftmatrices(the moulds used to cast type) in Leipzig on his way home.[12][5][a]The Ehrhardt type foundry of Leipzig released a surviving specimen sheet of them around 1720, leading to the attribution to Janson.[13][14]

Kis's surviving matrices were first acquired byStempel,and are now held in the collection of theDruckmuseum(Museum of Printing),Darmstadt.[15][16][17]Kis's identity as the maker of the typefaces was rediscovered in the 1950s by comparison with type from Hungarian archive sources (including his autobiography) on which his name was identified.[18][19][20]Due to their survival, the Janson typefaces became popular with fine printers of the lateArts and Crafts periodsuch asUpdike,who could print books from them using hand-set type cast from surviving original matrices. In his bookPrinting Types: Their History, Forms and Uses,Updike commented that "although heavy, they retain considerable vivacity of line and have great capabilities when used with taste."[14]

Despite its 17th-century origins, Janson is used in a wide variety of modern-day text applications. As of the magazine's 2011 redesign,Architectural Digestuses Janson for body text in all of its articles; so doesPhilosophy Now.It has also been used for the Journal of the BritishPrinting Historical Society.[21]

Revivals

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A book printed by Kis in Kolozsvár (modern nameCluj-Napoca) in 1697, after his return to Transylvania. It defends his somewhat contentious choices of editing and orthography in his Hungarian printing.

The Janson type was popular with twentieth-century typographers including Updike andStanley Morison,who admired its design as something different to the Didone and neo-medieval types dominant in the nineteenth century, and several revivals were made in the twentieth century for thehot metal typesettingsystems of the period.[22][2]

A revival of the face was designed in 1937 byChauncey H. Griffithof theMergenthaler Linotypefoundry.The revival was taken from the original matrices, held since 1919 by theStempel Type Foundry,which were Mergenthaler's exclusive agent in Europe. Griffith was a great admirer of the Janson designs, writing to Carl Rollins ofYale University Pressthat "I am so anxious to have the Linotype face worthy of its name. If I cannot succeed in satisfying myself that our interpretation of Janson will be worthy of the honored name it bears, we shall not hesitate a moment to scrap the whole work and forget it."[23]

The most common digital version, Janson Text, comes from a metal version produced by Hermann Zapf in the 1950s atStempel.This was based on Kis' original matrices.[24]Digitisations are available from Linotype, Adobe,Bitstream(adding Cyrillic glyphs),URW++(adding an additional light and black weights) and others. A separate digital version isElsner+Flake's Kis Antiqua Now. Described by Paul Shaw as the best digital version, it was designed by Hildegard Korger and Erhard Kaiser and originates from Korger's revival for the East German foundryVEB Typoart.[25][1][26]

A separate common revival of the Janson types isEhrhardt,created byMonotypein the 1930s.[27]Somewhat more condensed than most Janson revivals, giving it a crisp, vertical appearance, it is a popular book typeface, particularly often used in the UK.[28]Besides a number of revivals specifically ofEhrhardt(described in that article), two more by Linotype and Berthold have been sold under the name of Kis.[29][30]

Random House'sModern LibraryClassics collection has some of its books printed in a digitized version of Janson typeface.

References

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  1. ^abPaul Shaw (April 2017).Revival Type: Digital Typefaces Inspired by the Past.Yale University Press. pp. 78–9.ISBN978-0-300-21929-6.
  2. ^abAlexander S. Lawson (1990).Anatomy of a Typeface.David R. Godine Publisher. pp. 158–68.ISBN978-0-87923-333-4.
  3. ^Stauffacher, Jack (1985)."The Transylvanian Phoenix: the Kis-Janson Types in the Digital Era".Visible Language.19(1): 61–76. Archived fromthe originalon 30 December 2017.Retrieved19 May2017.
  4. ^Middendorp, Jan (2004).Dutch type.Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. p. 25.ISBN978-90-6450-460-0.Retrieved27 July2015.
  5. ^abcdLane, John(1983). "The Types of Nicholas Kis".Journal of the Printing Historical Society:47–75.
  6. ^Lawson, Alexander (1990).Anatomy of a Typeface(1st ed.). Boston: Godine. pp. 158–168.ISBN978-0-87923-333-4.
  7. ^Rozsondai, Marianne (2004)."The bindings of books printed by Miklos Misztotfalusi Kis".E codicibus impressisque: opstellen over het boek in de Lage landen voor Elly Cockx-Indestege.Leuven: Peeters. pp. 149–170.ISBN978-90-429-1423-0.
  8. ^"Miklós Kis"(PDF).Klingspor Museum.Retrieved6 November2015.
  9. ^"Quarto".Hoefler & Frere-Jones.Retrieved9 December2015.
  10. ^Johnson, A. F.(1939). "The 'Goût Hollandois'".The Library.s4-XX (2): 180–196.doi:10.1093/library/s4-XX.2.180.
  11. ^Mosley, James."Type and its Uses, 1455-1830"(PDF).Institute of English Studies.Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 9 October 2016.Retrieved7 October2016.
  12. ^Morison, Stanley; Carter, Harry (1973). "Chapter 8: Ehrhardt".A Tally of Types.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.117–122.ISBN978-0-521-09786-4.Retrieved11 September2015.
  13. ^"Ehrhardt Specimen Book image".Rietveld Academie. Archived fromthe originalon 10 December 2015.Retrieved6 November2015.
  14. ^abUpdike, Daniel Berkeley(1922). "Chapter 15: Types of the Netherlands, 1500-1800".Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Uses: Volume 2.Harvard University Press. p.44.Retrieved18 December2015.A headline...reads "Real Dutch Types"
  15. ^Mosley, James."The materials of typefounding".Type Foundry.Retrieved14 August2015.
  16. ^"Janson Text".MyFonts.Adobe/Linotype.Retrieved5 November2015.
  17. ^Heiderhoff, Horst (1984). "The Rediscovery of a Type Designer: Miklos Kis".Fine Print:25–30.
  18. ^Heiderhoff, Horst (1988). "The Rediscovery of a Type Designer: Miklos Kis". In Bigelow, Charles (ed.).Fine Print on Type: the best of Fine Print magazine on type and typography.San Francisco: Fine Print. pp. 74–80.ISBN978-0-9607290-2-9.
  19. ^Morison, Stanley (2009)."Chapter 8: Leipzig as a Centre of Type-Founding".In McKitterick, David (ed.).Selected essays on the history of letterforms in manuscript and print(Paperback reissue, digitally printed version ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 149–170.ISBN978-0-521-18316-1.
  20. ^Buday, George (1974). "Some More Notes on Nicholas Kis of the 'Janson' Types".Library.s5-XXIX: 21–35.doi:10.1093/library/s5-XXIX.1.21.
  21. ^Boag, Andrew (2000)."Monotype and Phototypesetting"(PDF).Journal of the Printing History Society:57–77. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 28 March 2016.Retrieved22 July2016.
  22. ^McKitterick, David, ed. (1979).Stanley Morison & D.B. Updike: Selected Correspondence.Scolar Press. pp. 24–5, etc.
  23. ^Tracy, Walter.Letters of Credit.pp. 38–9.
  24. ^Jaspert, Pincus, Berry, and Johnson, p. 122.
  25. ^Korger, Hildegard; Kaiser, Ehrhard."Kis Antiqua: Portrait of a Typeface".Fonts4Ever.Retrieved20 September2017.
  26. ^Karner, Michael."Ein Schriftporträt der Typoart Kis Now"(PDF).Design Typografie.Retrieved20 September2017.
  27. ^"Ehrhardt".MyFonts.Monotype.Retrieved14 June2015.
  28. ^Butterick, Matthew."Equity specimen"(PDF).Practical Typography.Retrieved13 July2015.
  29. ^Luin, Franko."Kis Classico LT".Linotype.Retrieved11 September2015.
  30. ^"Berthold Kis".MyFonts.Berthold.Retrieved11 September2015.
  1. ^This is a slight simplification: technically the mould is clamped around the matrix, however the matrix is the mould for the variable part of a sort.
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Wikimedia Commons has media related toJanson.

On other Kis/Janson revivals: On Ehrhardt:

Ehrhardt digitisations:

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