The specimen book and history that Linotype produced for Sabon Next is worth getting hold of if you can find a copy. Jean François' Sabon Next is actually quite close to Tschichold's drawings for the foundry version, with additional influence from the same 16th Century specimen from which Tschichold himself worked. The foundry type version was not constrained by the mechanical restrictions, and if I recall correctly there is some indication that Tschichold designed the foundry version first and then modified the design to fit the restrictions of the mechanical systems. And despite the goal of making a metrically equivalent design for both Linotype and Monotype, the three designs were not identical. It is worth bearing in mind that Tschichold designed Sabon for three different companies and their respective typesetting systems, not two: Linotype, Monotype, and Stempel 'foundry type', i.e, handset type. Take you pick.Īs so much of Sabon’s identity, as designed, is predicated on its metrics, it’s hard to see how Sabon Next is really a Sabon at all, other than trading on the name.

That essentially makes it another Garamond (of the 'Garamond' variety). So from my perspective, Sabon Next was completely recut to get rid of the compromises which occasioned the font in the first place. The roman printed better than most other Linotron photocomp fonts The italic was gappy, but you lived with it. As it happened, Sabon in Linotype photocomp just happened to work out as a very good font - it printed well. In fact, they were absent in the earlier photocomp days (em system yes, but a 54-unit em with Linotype and a 96-unit em with the last Monotype phtocomp machine). None of these objectives remain in today's composition. Sabon was a wonderful compromise, given the objectives. If I have this wrong, somebody on this board will correct me. (Severe limitations in setting speed, though.) I believe originally, the commission was to have all three the same, but in the event, the machine-set fonts were the same, but different from the foundry fonts. Linotype used duplexed mats, usually meaning the italic and roman were on the same matrix, and so had to have the same width.įonts for machine-setting with Linotype/Monotype are different from foundry type, which has neither limitation. With an em-based system, every character (sort) must have even units in width. Lots of differences here -, Monotype is based on the em-system and Linotype is not. Sabon was commissioned in the hot metal days, so that both the Monotype and Linotype fonts would be the same. But how about this: Sabon is basically a Garamond - a *Garamond* Garamond rather than a *Jannon* 'Garamond' (another long story). Garamond are directly based on Garamond’s work.It is a long story - too long for a single post. Upright) versions of Adobe Garamond, Granjon, Sabon, and Stempel Since around 1910, many modern revivals of Garamond and related The semi-bold, bold, and italic faces are used mostly as display Often used in small sizes for marginalia and captions to The clarity and harmony of their forms they have survived until the present. The Garamondįaces were later imporved by Robert Granjon and Christoph van Dyck. Ot design roman and italic faces and comonents of a type cut. Garmond, antiqua was designed and cut in Paris in 1535 by the punch-cutterĬlaude Garamon (1480-1561). Garamond typefaces are popular and often used, particularly for printing body text and books. The x-height (height of lower-case letters) is low, especially at larger sizes, making the capitals large relative to the lower case, while the top serifs on the ascenders of letters like ‘d’ have a downward slope and rise subtly above the cap height. Some distinctive characteristics in Garamond’s letters are the small eye of the ‘e’ and the bowl of the ‘a’, which has a sharp hook upwards at top left. A b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Sabon vs garamond typeface