Know Your Type Designers: William Caslon I

This week’s Typog­ra­phy Tues­day: Know You Type Design­ers: William Caslon I.

William Caslon I

Born 1692 in Worces­ter­shire, Eng­land
Died: 1766
Type­faces: Caslon, Pica Roman, Small Pica No. 1, Long Primer No. 2, Great Primer Roman

It’s an old printer’s maxim that “when in doubt use Caslon.” It is impres­sive that for almost 200 years his type­face has been used as the default font for print­ers in the Eng­lish speak­ing world.

Orig­i­nally trained as a gun­smith and engraver, William Caslon I opened his own type foundry in 1722; where he devel­oped Hebrew, Ara­bic and Roman type­faces. The pro­duc­tion of his Roman fonts ended the Eng­lish depen­dence on Dutch made type. Though  not con­sid­ered an inno­va­tor (since his style of fonts were com­mon) his exe­cu­tion and con­sum­mate skill as a crafts­man are unpar­al­leled. His type­faces were also very pop­u­lar in Amer­ica and was used by Mary Kather­ine God­dard for the print­ing of the Amer­i­can Dec­la­ra­tion of Independence.

For more information:

• William Caslon Biography
• William Caslon on Wikipedia
• Caslon Font
• Adobe Caslon Font

Interesting timelapse video of choosing a typeface

I saw this inter­est­ing time­lapse video of the very tal­ented Designer Brian Hoff as he works up dif­fer­ent looks for a logo he is work­ing on.  Any­one who has ever done this can relate to this fun and frus­trat­ing (at times) chore of pick­ing just the right typeface.

Often times  I have the per­fect type­face in mind or at the very least a gen­eral style based on appro­pri­ate­ness, his­tor­i­cal con­ven­tion and client require­ments. How­ever some­times the joy is just scrolling through and find­ing a happy acci­dent of a type­face that looks good when you least expect it. One of the lit­tle joys I get in the wild world of Graphic Design.

Related Links:

• Brian Hoff’s Website
• Brian’s post about cre­at­ing the video
• Brian’s port­fo­lio
• The offi­cial site of Suit­case­fu­sion 2 by Exten­sis. One of these days I keep to pick up a copy.