Excelsior Alternatives

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.

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. Olympian font itself tends toward the Old Face style but is nevertheless an example of this new generation, a result of a time of change and... Read More

Nimrod was released by Monotype in 1980. Designed for current newspaper technology, the Nimrod font family evolved as a result of extensive examination of newspaper industry needs. Nimrod retains many of the features of the traditional newspaper Ionics, but some of the fussier detailing has been replaced by the more sober forms of the old styles, such as Plantin. A highly legible font family,... Read More

Plantin is a family of text typefaces created by Monotype in 1913. Their namesake, Christophe Plantin (Christoffel Plantijn in Dutch),... 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

Designed for the newspaper technology of the 1980s, Clarion uses many of the findings made in the preparation of Monotype Nimrod, from which it is derived. The Clarion font family differs from Nimrod in its detailing, which is more akin to that of the Ionics, a style which influenced most designers of contemporary newspaper faces. The large x-height and sturdy construction of the characters... Read More

ITC Mendoza is a serif typeface with old style characteristics. A generous x-height and a lack of contrast between thick and thin strokes, gives the ITC Mendoza Roman font family good legibility and provides a sturdiness which enables the face to withstand low resolution output and less than ideal printing conditions. It is ideal for continuous text use, particularly in small point sizes.

Designed by M. Fahrenwaldt for the Schriftguss foundry in 1929, Minister font is a contemporary design based on Garalde types. The letters have an oblique stress, capitals are wide, serifs are prominently concave. Minister font has obvious calligraphic overtones, making it a good informal text face.

When traveling in Paris, American designer Frederic W. Goudy did a rubbing of a second century marble inscription he found in the Louvre. After ruminating on these letterforms for several years, he drew a titling typeface in 1918, all around the letters P, R, and E. He called the new face "Hadriano" as that name was in the original inscription. Robert Wiebking cut the matrices, and the... Read More

Res Publica is a workhorse. It is quite anonymous as typeface, without any distinctive marks. But it gives a harmonious text body, well suited for large amounts of text, such as official public reports, magazines based mainly on text, school books, and so on.The "public" concept is part of the name. Res Publica is Latin for "public matters". The word republic has the same origin.Res Publica was... Read More

Linotype Really, designed by Gary Munch, is a typeface family of six weights with italics and small capitals that offers a broad palette of expressions to draw from, sensibly light to brightly stentorian. The moderate-to-strong contrast of the vertical to horizontal strokes recalls the Transitional and Modern styles of Baskerville and Bodoni, and the subtly obliqued axis of the stoke weight... Read More

Rudolph Ruzicka designed his font Fairfield as a legible text font. His philosophy: "The reader expects optical assistance with reading. He does not want to be distracted while interpreting and understanding the ideas of a text." Fairfield font is based on the forms of Venecian Old Face fonts as well as on the designs and details of Art Deco, giving the font a distinctive appearance

Linotype Monticello was designed by C.H. Griffith in 1946. Its design is based on James Ronaldsons Roman No.1 and Oxford Typefaces from American Type Founders and was revised by Matthew Carter while he was working at Linotype between 1965 -1981.

Rundfunk Antiqua was originally designed as a font for small point size and shorter texts. It was presented 1933/35 by Linotype Designstudio but unfortunately never developed as a font family, including only Antiqua roman and sans-serif bold. Such an unusual combination resulted from the font combinations common during that time. Rundfunk Antiqua font's basic forms tend toward the Transitional... Read More

This font is a late work of the famous Berlin font artist Martin Wilke. Presented by Linotype AG in 1988, Wilke is a lively font with eccentric, playful forms. Wilke was influenced in part by the letters of the Irish handwriting in the Book of Kells, written in the late 8th century, while the pronounced contrast in strokes goes back to the styles of the 18th century. the font's uniqueness is... Read More

ITC Tiffany font was designed by Edward Benguiat, a highly contemporary blend of two fonts, Ronaldson and Caxton. The best characteristics of both were combined to produce a refined and refreshing font, ITC Tiffany.

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

I have a notation that the summer of 1994, when I worked with Kalix, was a warm one. I had no special typeface in mind when drawing the characters of Kalix, but many typefaces contributed to it, e.g. my own Omnibus from which I borrowed the looks of the smal case g. I think it is a lovely typeface whose use is mainly for books and magazines.Kalix is the name of a northern Swedish town situated... Read More

Gerard Unger developed Swift™ between 1984 and 1987, with the intention of making a modern digital type for newspapers. The project was undertaken for the German firm Dr.-Ing Rudolf Hell GmbH. At that time, newspapers were produced on high-speed presses with low quality paper. Unger says Swift is "designed to be a survivor." It has chunky triangular serifs, sturdy connections at junctures,... Read More