Times New Roman
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You need JavaScript enabled and the latest version of Flash Player to see this type sample.Credits
- Designer(s)
- Victor Lardent, Stanley Morison
- Foundry(ies)
- Monotype
- Release Year
- 1931
- Country of Origin
- United Kingdom
- Classification
- Serif, Transitional
- Original Format
- Metal (Machine Composition)
- Distributor(s)
- Monotype
- Tags
- newspaper, overused, roman, serif, ubiquitous
Background
The British newspaper, The Times, commissioned Times New Roman in 1931 after Stanley Morison wrote an article criticizing the newspaper for being badly printed and typographically antiquated. The font was supervised by Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent (an artist from the advertising department of the Times) at the English branch of Monotype. Morison used an older font named Plantin as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space.
Since the previous type used by the newspaper had been called Times Old Roman, Morison’s revision became Times New Roman and made its debut in the 3 October 1932 issue of The Times newspaper. After one year, the design was released for commercial sale. The Times stayed with Times New Roman for 40 years, but new production techniques and the format change from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004 have caused the newspaper to switch fonts five times since 1972. However, all the new fonts have been variants of the original New Roman font.
Although no longer used by The Times, Times New Roman is still widely used for book typography and, partly because Microsoft Word defaults to it when creating a new document, it has become ubiquitous on modern computers. It has also been influential in the subsequent development of a number of other serif faces, both before and after the start of the digital-font era. A notable example is Georgia, designed by Matthew Carter, which has very similar stroke shapes to Times New Roman but wider serifs and is intended for specifically for viewing on screen.
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