Adobe Jenson is an old-style

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are list of type ...

drawn for

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

by its chief type designer

Robert Slimbach Robert Joseph Slimbach is Principal Type Designer at Adobe, Inc., where he has worked since 1987. He has won many awards for his digital typeface designs, including the rarely awarded Prix Charles Peignot from the Association Typographique Inter ...

. Its Roman styles are based on a text face cut by

Nicolas Jenson Nicholas Jenson (c. 1420 – 1480) was a French engraver, pioneer, printer and type designer who carried out most of his work in Venice, Italy. Jenson acted as Master of the French Royal Mint at Tours and is credited with being the creator of on ...

in Venice around 1470, and its italics are based on those created by

Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi ( Cornedo Vicentino, 1475?–1527?) was a papal scribe and type designer in Renaissance Italy. Very little is known of the circumstances of his life. He may have started his career as a writing master in Venice, ...

fifty years later. Jenson is an organic design, with a low

x-height upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the let ...

. It is considered a highly readable typeface and is accordingly often used in book design for body text.

Development

Adobe Jenson was first released in 1996 as a multiple master font. It was created using sophisticated interpolation or multiple-master technology, to create a range of weights and

optical size In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mode ...

s suitable for different text sizes. This partial automation of font creation was intended to allow a gradual trend in styles from solid, chunky designs for caption-size small print to more graceful and slender designs for headings. It is now sold in the standard

OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...

font format under the name Adobe Jenson Pro. Jenson's type used an 'M' with two-way top serifs and a 'Q' with a curled tail, both now not commonly seen; the default characters are more contemporary forms but both were included as alternate characters.

Adobe Jenson Pro

Adobe Jenson Pro is an OpenType update of the original family. The font family supports Adobe CE, ISO-Adobe (later Adobe Western 2), dingbat character sets. The family comes with 4 weights each in roman and italic, and 4 optical sizes. Supported OpenType features include Stylistic alternates, ligatures, proportional numbers, old style figures, small caps, subscripts and superscripts, ordinals, and swashes (italic fonts only).

Related typefaces

Many other typefaces have been cut based on the work of Jenson. William Morris's

Golden Type The Golden Type is a serif font designed by artist William Morris for his fine book printing project, the Kelmscott Press, in 1890. It is an "old-style" serif font, based on type designed by engraver and printer Nicolas Jenson in Venice around 147 ...

created the trend in the 1890s; his design is known for its emboldening of Jenson's original design, giving it something of the feel of

blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...

. It is named for ''

The Golden Legend The ''Golden Legend'' (Latin: ''Legenda aurea'' or ''Legenda sanctorum'') is a collection of hagiographies by Jacobus de Voragine that was widely read in late medieval Europe. More than a thousand manuscripts of the text have survived.Hilary ...

'', which was intended to be the first book printed using it. Popular since the 1930s, Bruce Rogers'

Centaur A centaur ( ; grc, κένταυρος, kéntauros; ), or occasionally hippocentaur, is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse. Centaurs are thought of in many Greek myths as being ...

is a much more slender revival in the same style.

American Type Founders American Type Founders (ATF) Co. was a business trust created in 1892 by the merger of 23 type foundries, representing about 85% of all type manufactured in the United States. De Vinne, Theodore Low, ''The Practice of Typography,'' Century Comp ...

Cloister Old Style Cloister is a serif typeface that was designed by Morris Fuller Benton and published by American Type Founders from around 1913. It is loosely based on the printing of Nicolas Jenson in Venice in the 1470s, in what is now called the "old style" of ...

was created by its design team led by

Morris Fuller Benton Morris Fuller Benton (November 30, 1872 – June 30, 1948) was an American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders (ATF), for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937. Many of Benton's ...

around 1915, during the same period as Centaur. Ludlow created another release with italic under the direction of Ernst F. Detterer and

Robert Hunter Middleton Robert Hunter Middleton (May 6, 1898 – August 3, 1985) was an American book designer, painter, and typeface designer. Born in Glasgow, Scotland he came to Chicago in 1908 where he studied at the School of the Art Institute. He joined the des ...

in the 1920s.

also issued a very eccentric Jenson revival inspired by the work of Morris which is little-known today.

Tobias Frere-Jones Tobias Frere-Jones (born Tobias Edgar Mallory Jones; August 28, 1970) is an American type designer who works in New York City. He operates the company Frere-Jones Type and teaches typeface design at the Yale School of Art MFA program. Among his ty ...

created a revival in 1994 named

Hightower Text Hightower Text is a serif typeface designed by Tobias Frere-Jones. It is loosely based on the printing of Nicolas Jenson in Venice in the 1470s, in what is now called the "old style" of serif fonts. Begun by Frere-Jones while he was a student, ...

that is bundled with some Microsoft software, adding his own italic design.

References

{{notelist *''Adobe Jenson Specimen Book''.

Adobe Systems Incorporated Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the cre ...

, 1996.

External links

Jenson ProAdobe Jenson Pro Opticals
Old style serif typefaces Typefaces with optical sizes Adobe typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1996 Typefaces designed by Robert Slimbach