Frank Hinman Pierpont (born 1860,

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

– died 11 February 1937,

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

) was an American engineer and

typeface designer Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below. A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...

. He worked primarily in England for the

Monotype Corporation Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with ...

of Britain. After training as a mechanic in

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...

, Pierpont began employment in 1886 with a patent office where he worked on a typesetting machine. Leaving for Europe in 1894, by 1896 he became a director of Typograph Setzmachinen-Fabrik, a German manufacturer of typesetting machines. Beginning in 1899 and continuing until 1936, a year before his death, Pierpont first helped to establish and then act as factory manager and later board member of the British branch of

Lanston Monotype Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with ...

Salfords Salfords ) is a village in the borough of Reigate and Banstead in Surrey, England. It lies approximately south of Redhill on the A23 London to Brighton road. The village is within the civil parish of Salfords and Sidlow which covers a popu ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

, England. While working for Monotype he supervised the reproduction of revivals of classic type designs and new designs such as

Times New Roman Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration wit ...

.Friedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. ''Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History.'' Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. .. He reportedly had doubts about the artistic ambitions of Monotype's artistic adviser

Stanley Morison Stanley Arthur Morison (6 May 1889 – 11 October 1967) was a British typographer, printing executive and historian of printing. Largely self-educated, he promoted higher standards in printing and an awareness of the best printing and typefaces o ...

and publicity manager

Beatrice Warde Beatrice Lamberton Warde (September 20, 1900 – September 16, 1969, née Beatrice Becker) was a twentieth-century writer and scholar of typography. As a marketing manager for the British Monotype Corporation, she was influential in the deve ...

, complaining in one 1920s memo of the

Gill Sans Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards. Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Underground. ...

typeface, then in development, that "I see nothing in this design to recommend it and much that is objectionable." In his spare time Pierpont enjoyed growing roses. He retired as Works Manager in 1936 and became Consulting Engineer with a seat on the board, an occasion marked by a dinner at the

Savoy Hotel The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London, England. Built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions, it opened on 6 August 188 ...

, but died the following year.

Typefaces designed by F. H. Pierpont

All faces cut by British Monotype: *

Imprint Imprint or imprinting may refer to: Entertainment * ''Imprint'' (TV series), Canadian television series * "Imprint" (''Masters of Horror''), episode of TV show ''Masters of Horror'' * ''Imprint'' (film), a 2007 independent drama/thriller film ...

with Fritz Stelzer * Plantin (1913), with Fritz Stelzer * Horley Oldstyle (1925), named for

Horley Horley is a town in the borough of Reigate and Banstead in Surrey, England, south of the towns of Reigate and Redhill. The county border with West Sussex is to the south with Crawley and Gatwick Airport close to the town. It has its own ec ...

, the nearest town to Monotype's works. An amiable serif similar to

Goudy Old Style Goudy Old Style (also known as just Goudy) is an Serif#Old-style, old-style serif typeface originally created by Frederic Goudy, Frederic W. Goudy for American Type Founders (ATF) in 1915. Suitable for text and display applications, Goudy Old Styl ...

and Kennerley. *

Monotype Grotesque Monotype Grotesque is a family of sans-serif typefaces released by the Monotype Corporation for its hot metal typesetting system. It belongs to the grotesque or industrial genre of early sans-serif designs. Like many early sans-serifs, it forms ...

(1926), an updating of the

Berthold Type Foundry H. Berthold AG was one of the largest and most successful type foundries in the world for most of the modern typographic era, making the transition from foundry type to cold type successfully and only coming to dissolution in the digital type era. ...

’s Ideal Grotesque. *

Bembo Bembo is a serif typeface created by the British branch of the Monotype Corporation in 1928–1929 and most commonly used for body text. It is a member of the " old-style" of serif fonts, with its regular or roman style based on a design cut a ...

(1929) revival supervised by Pierpont, following his previous Poliphilus and Blado designs on the same theme * Rockwell (1934)

References

*Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson. ''The Encyclopedia of Type Faces.'' Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. .

External links

Circuitous Root
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pierpont, Frank Hinman American typographers and type designers 1860 births 1937 deaths American emigrants to the United Kingdom