Centaur (typeface)

Category Serif
Classification Old-style,
Venetian
Designer(s) Bruce Rogers
Frederic Warde
Nicolas Jenson
Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi
Foundry Monotype Corporation
Date created 1914
Date released 1929
Also known as Metropolitan

Centaur is a serif typeface by book and typeface designer Bruce Rogers, based on the Renaissance-period printing of Nicolas Jenson around 1470. It was given widespread release by Monotype, paired with an italic design by Frederic Warde.

Centaur is an elegant and quite slender design, an effect possibly amplified in the digital release. It was designed for fine book printing and is often used both for printing body text and also titles and headings.[1] One of its most notable uses has been in the designs of Penguin Books, who have regularly used it for titling.[2]

Historical background

Jenson's roman type, from a 1475 edition.

Rogers' primary influence was Nicholas Jenson's 1470 Eusebius, considered the model for the modern upright printing of the Roman alphabet, which Rogers studied through enlarged photographs.[3] Centaur also shows the influence of types cut by Francesco Griffo in 1495 for a small book titled De Aetna written by Pietro Bembo. The typeface is classified as belonging to the humanist style of old-style designs, based on the predominant influence of Jenson's work. The style is also called Venetian for the city Jenson worked in during his career as a printer.

Arrighi's italic typeface design, ca. 1527. At the time italic capitals had not been invented, but were always upright in the Roman inscriptional tradition.

The inspiration for Centaur's italic comes from thirty years later, in the calligraphy and printing of Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi.[4] Arrighi was a Rome-based calligrapher who made the transition to working in printing, releasing a writing manual, La operina…', and other printed works.[5][6][lower-alpha 1] These used an italic font presumably based on his calligraphy.[9] It inspired later French italic types from 1528 onwards.[10][11][lower-alpha 2]

Revival

Rogers' revival was originally drawn as titling capitals in 1914 for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[3] Rogers later expanded it, adding lower case, for his 1915 limited edition of Maurice de Guérin's The Centaur.

For the original release, matrices were cut by Robert Wiebking and the type was privately cast by American Type Founders. Some years later, the Monotype Corporation commissioned Rogers to release it for the general market. Rogers did not feel able to create a matching italic, and asked the calligrapher Frederic Warde if he could pair Centaur with a design Warde had created based upon Ludovico Arrighi’s 1520 chancery face, made in 1926 for the Officina Bodoni.[12] Warde's design had the separate name Arrighi, which appears in some earlier specimens.[3][13]

Centaur & Arrighi identified separately on a metal type specimen book, at large print size
Centaur & Arrighi at text size

The completed family was released for general use in 1929, with a first showing in Monotype's specimen booklet The Trained Printer and the Amateur by Alfred W. Pollard.[14][15] Monotype described it as a 'long-descender type of great distinction', emphasising its feeling of not having been restricted to allow tighter linespacing, as other types often had been in the hot metal period.[16] Monotype has sold the design with bold and bold italic designs (their invention, since bold type did not exist until much later), and swash italic alternate characters.[17]

Centaur shows some of the irregularities of early type compared to later designs. The dots of the i and j are very visibly shifted to the right, a feature of Jenson's original design. The e's horizontal stroke is slanted, not exactly horizontal as came to be the norm in print. On the other hand, the italic capitals slope in the modern tradition, which was established after Jenson and Arrighi's time in the later 16th century.[18]

Digitisations

Centaur has been digitised, both by Monotype in collaboration with Adobe, and by LTC, who assumed the rights to many Lanston (American) Monotype typefaces under the name of Metropolitan. The revivals have slightly different features; Monotype’s having a bold and bold italic and swash caps and LTC’s having a more complex, less smooth digitisation with many italic alternates and complementary ornaments.[19][20] A number of amateur revivals have also been developed, none complete as of 2015.

Related fonts

Other Monotype fonts of the hot metal period inspired by Renaissance printing included Lutetia by Jan van Krimpen (another Venetian design), Bembo (with a roman based on a slightly later font used by Aldus Manutius) and Dante.

Among other Venetian revivals, Adobe Jenson is a notable and extremely complete digital revival from 1996 with features such as optical size fonts for different text sizes. William Morris's Golden Type began revivals of the Jenson style in 1892 with a more solid structure (no matching italic was created for it), while Morris Fuller Benton's Cloister was created around 1915 during the same period as Centaur.[21][22] Ludlow created another release with italic under the direction of Ernst F. Detterer and Robert Hunter Middleton in the 1920s.[23] American Type Founders also issued a very eccentric Jenson revival inspired by the work of Morris which is little-known today.[24] Tobias Frere-Jones created a revival in 1994 named Hightower that is bundled with some Microsoft software, adding his own italic design.[25]

Usage

Outside its common uses, Centaur is also used for the wordmark of John Varvatos and in the children's book Crispin: The Cross of Lead, set in the Middle Ages.[26][27]

References

  1. ↑ Shaw, Paul. "Book Review: Type Revivals". Blue Pencil. Retrieved 19 September 2015.
  2. ↑ Doubleday, Richard. "Jan Tschichold at Penguin Books: A Resurgance(sic) of Classical Book Design" (PDF). Retrieved 30 June 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 "Facts about Centaur" (PDF). Monotype Recorder 32 (1): 20–21. 1933. Retrieved 20 September 2015.
  4. ↑ Novoa, James Nelson (2011). Zinguer, Ilana, ed. Hebraic Aspects of the Renaissance: Sources and Encounters. Leiden: Brill. pp. 65–77. ISBN 9789004212558. Retrieved 28 December 2015.
  5. ↑ Arrighi, Ludovico Vicentino degli (1524). La operina di Ludouico Vicentino, da imparare di scriuere littera cancellarescha. Rome/Venice?. Retrieved 28 December 2015.
  6. ↑ Clayton, Ewan (2013). The Golden Thread: the story of writing. Counterpoint. pp. 128–151. ISBN 9781619023505.
  7. ↑ Goldberg, Jonathan (1990). Writing matter: from the hands of the English Renaissance. Stanford University Press. pp. 70–75. ISBN 9780804719582. Retrieved 28 December 2015.
  8. ↑ Witcombe, Christopher L.C.E. (2004). Copyright in the Renaissance: prints and the privilegio in sixteenth-century Venice and Rome. Leiden: Brill. pp. 285–286. ISBN 9789004137486. Retrieved 28 December 2015.
  9. ↑ Morison, Stanley; Johnson, Alfred (2009). "3: The Chancery Types of Italy and France". In McKitterick, David John. Selected essays on the history of letter-forms in manuscript and print (Paperback reissue, digitally printed version. ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 30–45. ISBN 9780521183161. Retrieved 28 December 2015.
  10. ↑ Vervliet, Hendrik D.L. (2008). The palaeotypography of the French Renaissance. Selected papers on sixteenth-century typefaces. 2 vols. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV. pp. 90–91. ISBN 9789004169821.
  11. ↑ The Monotype Corporation limited, specimen blade 5-64, Bembo 270
  12. ↑ Friedl, Ott, and Stein, Typography: an Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Throughout History. Black Dog & Levinthal Publishers: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7, pp. 540-41.
  13. ↑ "Centaur & Arrighi". Chestnut Press. Retrieved 28 December 2015.
  14. ↑ Alexander S. Lawson, Anatomy of a Typeface David R. Godine: 1990. ISBN 978-0-87923-333-4, pp. 92-93.
  15. ↑ "The Fifty Best Books exhibition" (PDF). Monotype Recorder 29: 6–11. September 1930. Retrieved 19 September 2015.
  16. ↑ "Colophon" (PDF). Monotype Recorder 36 (2): 2. Summer 1937.
  17. ↑ "Centaur Swash MT". MyFonts. Monotype. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  18. ↑ Dearden, James (1973). Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science: Claude Garamond. New York u.a.: Dekker. pp. 196–199. ISBN 978-0-8247-2109-1. Retrieved 11 December 2015.
  19. ↑ "LTC Metropolitan YWFT". YWFT. LTC. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  20. ↑ "LTC Metropolitan". MyFonts. LTC. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  21. ↑ "ITC Golden Type". MyFonts. ITC. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  22. ↑ "LTC Cloister". LTC. MyFonts. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  23. ↑ "Nicolas Jenson SG". MyFonts. Speice Graphics/Ludlow. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  24. ↑ "LTC Jenson". LTC. MyFonts. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  25. ↑ Frere-Jones, Tobias. "Hightower". Font Bureau. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  26. ↑ Gramly, P.R. "Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi". Fonts in Use. Retrieved 20 September 2015.
  27. ↑ Shaw, Paul. "Flawed Typefaces". Print magazine. Retrieved 2 July 2015.
  1. ↑ Arrighi's book had a complex publication history apparently involving a dispute between Arrighi and his publisher, making its dating and printing location(s) both somewhat involved. It is believed to have been published in Rome and Venice between 1522 and 1525.[7][8]
  2. ↑ Centaur's italic is one of several based on the work of Arrighi created by Monotype in the 1920s, including the italic Blado and Bembo Condensed Italic. Bembo's default italic is based on the work of Arrighi's contemporary Giovanni Antonio Tagliente.

External links

Bruce Rogers:

Professional digitisations:

Amateur projects:

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