Font Fridays: 19th Century American Type, from Oak Knoll Press
Happy Font Friday! This week, we’ve got a wonderful bit of typographical history for you: Nineteenth-Century American Designers & Engravers of Type from Oak Knoll Press.
A History of Exuberance
In 1896, William E. Loy—a San Francisco printing equipment salesman and scholar—decided to write a series of profiles of type designers. Loy took a long view of history, realizing that it was important to document the men who created the nineteenth century’s fanciful types. His work was serialized in The Inland Printer over the next three years and included biographies, photographs of the artists, and lists of the type they had designed or cut, which Loy painstakingly compiled through correspondence with the type founders and other craftsmen. Unfortunately, due to the technical limitations of a monthly periodical, it was not possible to show the typefaces mentioned. Here, finally, is the work as Loy envisioned it, with over 800 illustrations of typefaces designed by the craftsmen he discusses.
How it Works
Anyone can enter the contest by taking just a minute or two to do a good deed for Typedia. It could be something as simple as adding a release year, or uploading a specimen, or contributing some background information. Tell us your good deed in the comments to be entered in the contest. You can only enter once. You have until 9am EST Monday, January 25th to enter. After 9am, a winner will be randomly selected, and we’ll announce the winner here.
Good luck!
Update: And we have a winner! JTraylor wins the copy of Nineteenth-Century American Designers & Engravers of Type. Thanks to Oak Knoll Press for sponsoring the giveaway, and we’ll see you again next week!
Comments are closed on this entry.
1.
Brandy Bingham Jan 22, 2010
Changes for Walkway
2.
skabob11 Jan 22, 2010
Add Adrian Frutiger’s Ondine along with a type specimen.
3.
Jake Jan 22, 2010
Added a small background to Italian Didot and also added distributors, background, and tags to Perpetua .
4.
mattdesmond Jan 22, 2010
Added myself and began adding my typefaces. ;-P
5.
designfrontier Jan 22, 2010
Changes to Adobe Wood Type Ornaments Std
Added Fette Egyptienne along with
6.
Craighill Jan 22, 2010
added specimen for base nine
7.
Brendan Falkowski Jan 22, 2010
Renamed “Albert Pro” to FS Albert and added:
Also added to Hermes:
Both need samples still. Sorry don’t own them.
8.
Laura Fisher Jan 22, 2010
Added background to FF Fontesque.
9.
Tony Jan 22, 2010
I added the release year for Scriptina and added the background for Graublau Sans Web.
10.
pauldhunt Jan 22, 2010
Added the country of origin to Adobe Woodtype Ornaments.
11.
jtraylor Jan 22, 2010
I added the background information for the designer Bruce Rogers.
12.
aaronbell Jan 23, 2010
Added foundry, origin & release information to Hunter.
Also added designer, foundry, country of origin & background to Maiandra.
13.
riccard0 Jan 24, 2010
Added:
original format to Sansumi, release year to Aafje, and classification to Aaux Office.
Changed classification to Aaux.
Also, does submitting an ampersand to Font Aid IV counts as a good deed?
14.
Christopher O'Donnell Jan 24, 2010
Added Normetica.