Cambria Alternatives

John Baskerville (1706-1775) was an accomplished writing master and printer from Birmingham, England. He was the designer of several types, punchcut by John Handy, which are the basis for the fonts that bear the name Baskerville today. The excellent quality of his printing influenced such famous printers as Didot in France and Bodoni in Italy. Though he was known internationally as an innovator... Read More

In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older... Read More

In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older... Read More

Ragnar can be called a typeface for compact typography. It is loosely related to the Saga typeface in many ways, even including its name. During discussing on what Saga should be called, the name "Ragnarök" (Gottendammerung) was humorously suggested. "Ragnarök" would of course have been unsuitable, since it uses a letter with a diacritic sign, and in many computer systems, that is a deadly sin.... Read More

Rotis is a large typeface family consisting of, Serif, Semi Serif, Semi Serif and Sans Serif font styles. Agfa Rotis was created for Agfa Compugraphic. The font styles are matched for weight and height to give consistency when mixed. Certain round characters have a distinctive calligraphic treatment which is apparent in all styles. A versatile family which can be used for text as well as... Read More

In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older... Read More

Life font was designed in 1964 by W. Bilz and marks the beginning of a new generation of newsprint fonts. The Ionic style had replaced Modern Face and was now replaced by this new innovative style, which mixed elements of Old Face, Transitional and Modern Face forms. Life's characters are based on the forms of Times and are the result of a time of change and experimentation.

ITC Slimbach font is the work of California calligrapher and type designer Robert Slimbach. Inspired in part by German fonts and the work of Hermann zapf, Slimbach created a "contemporary text font with a progressive look," combining clean serif shapes with the warmth of calligraphic forms.

Created at D. Stempel AG in 1977, Linotype's Gazette is a text typeface that was designed to withstand the rigors of high-speed newspaper presses and coarse newsprint. It is also guaranteed to result in legible texts despite long press runs.

Semper is slightly angular since it is in part based on callygraphic lettering. That is not as evident as in the italic of Jenson Classico. On the contrary, the text looks even and harmonious, which makes the typeface easy to use.The name is Latin meaning always, but you knew that already.Semper was released in 1993.

Méridien™ was developed in the mid-1950s, and released by the French foundry Deberny & Peignot in 1957. After studying a typeface from the sixteenth century, the Swiss designer Adrian Frutiger was inspired to create an alphabet without any completely straight strokes, and he hoped the reader of a text set in this typeface would feel as though wandering through a forest. The designer of more... Read More

I began my work on Emona while still struggling with Birka. I took the superellyptic form as the basic shape, and that gives the typeface some of its characteristics. It is strictly vertical. It is easy to classify it in the same section as Bodoni & Company.Emona is what Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, was called in the Roman days.Emona was released in 1992.

Omnibus is one of my absolute favourites. My intention was to design a typeface as easy to read as Baskerville, without being a copy of it. It is easy to see that I was influenced by Baskerville, e.g. in the open lowercase g. I had in mind to design a Baskerville with the looks of the Baskervilles used in earlier typesetting. I put aside those plans for a while (but fulfilled them later on) and... Read More

ITC Cheltenham font in its present form is the work of designer Tony Stan. Originally designed by architect Bertram Goodhue, it was expanded by Morris Fuller Benton and completed by Stan in 1975 with a larger x-height and improved italic details. ITC Cheltenham font is an example of an up-to-date yet classic typeface.

As its name implies, Photina was created specifically for phototypesetting, the technology that preceded digital and laser typesetting. Photina was designed by Jose Mendoza y Almeida in 1971 and was the third face made by the Monotype Corporation for phototypesetting systems. Its high typographic quality, robustness, and refined detail have made Photina popular for magazine and book text.

After the Second World War, the Ionic style replaced Modern Face as the favored typeface for newsprint. A couple decades later, it was in turn replaced by the next generation of newspaper fonts, a mix of Old Face, Transitional and Modern Face forms. Rotation font was designed by Arthur Ritzel and presented by Stempel/Linotype in 1971 and named for the rotation newsprint machine for which is... Read More

ITC Esprit is the work of designer Jovica Veljović and blends the classic proportions of a serif typeface with the grace and charm of calligraphy. Highly legible even in small point sizes, the font can also be used as an impressive display face for use with sans serif text.

Hermann Zapf made his first scetches for Orion in 1963. Zapf's aim was to create a neutral textface which can be ideally used as a newspaper face. Its strokethickness and open letterforms also fits well for book and magazine production. The final two weights of Orion were released in 1974 for the Linofilm photocomposing machine.

Loosely based on Bembo and Plantin, the Perrywood font family retains some old style characteristics which give the face a familiar feel, however much attention has been paid to optimizing the design to give good quality output at small point sizes and from low resolution output devices. The consistency of character shapes allows close letter spacing to give compact word shapes, excellent word... Read More

Sumner Stone worked together with Bob Ishi of Adobe to create the Stone family fonts, which appeared in 1987. Coincidentally, ishi is the Japanese word for stone, which precluded any squabbling about whose name the font would carry. The family consists of three types of fonts, a serif, a sans-serif and an informal style. The Stone fonts are very legible and make a modern, dynamic impression.

When Adrian Frutiger developed this font in 1980, he was influenced by the ancient scripts often found on stones in Normandy or Ireland. This is by no means a direct interpretation of such scripts, however. Icone™ has asymmetric flaring serifs, a distinct lack of straight lines, and the comfortable legibility that is characteristic of Frutiger types. Icone reflects the successful attempt to... Read More

ITC Élan combines a gothic simplicity with elegance in a distinctive yet subtle typeface design. There is also a feeling of architectural strength which is derived primarily from an optically even line-weight and a sense of vertical stress. The small, almost Latin, serifs add distinction at both display and text sizes. The large x-height, minimum stroke variance, and open counters are ideal... Read More

Kis Classico™ is named after the Hungarian monk Miklós Kis who traveled to Amsterdam at the end of the seventeenth century to learn the art of printing. Amsterdam was a center of printing and punchcutting, and Kis cut his own type there in about 1685. For centuries, Kis's type was wrongly attributed to Anton Janson, a Dutch punchcutter who worked in Leipzig in the seventeenth century. Most... Read More