Granjon 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 ...

Garamond Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Garamond-style typefaces are popular and particularly often used for book printing and b ...

typeface that was used in a book printed by the Parisian Jean Poupy in 1592. The roman design was from

Claude Garamond Claude Garamont (–1561), known commonly as Claude Garamond, was a French type designer, publisher and punch-cutter based in Paris. Garamond worked as an engraver of punches, the masters used to stamp matrices, the moulds used to cast metal ty ...

and the italic version was from

Robert Granjon Robert Granjon (1513-November 16, 1589/March 1590) was a French type designer and printer. He worked in Paris, Lyon, Frankfurt, Antwerp, and Rome for various printers. He is best known for having introduced the typeface Civilité and for his ital ...

. Because several other Garamonds were on the market in the 1920s, Jones decided to name his type Granjon. Jones, a master printer based in London, had been engaged by Linotype to improve the quality of their typeface range through the development of revivals of notable type designs of the past. Granjon was popular in the metal type era and

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 ...

described it as her favourite revival of French renaissance typefaces in her famous 1926 article on the topic; it was also praised by former Linotype designer

Walter Tracy Walter Valentine Tracy RDI (14 February 1914 – 28 April 1995) was an English type designer, typographer and writer. Biography Walter Tracy was born in Islington, London and attended Shoreditch Secondary school. At the age of fourteen he wa ...

. (Many of the Garamond revivals of the 1920s were later shown to be actually based on the types of Jean Jannon; Granjon was an exception to this. Warde commented "It would seem that Garamond's name, having so long been used on a design he never cut, is now by stern justice left off a face which is undoubtedly his.") Jones developed a companion bold named Bernhard, named for sixteenth-century engraver

Bernard Salomon Bernard Salomon, (1506–1561) was a French painter, draftsman and engraver. Little is known of the life of Bernard Salomon (also known as the Little Bernard B. Gallus or Gallo). His family may have been belt-makers in Lyon. He was commissioned ...

. A longtime popular text type, Granjon's digital version is sometimes criticized as being "anemic" in smaller point sizes.

References

*Friedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. ''Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History.'' Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. . *Jaspert, Berry and Johnson. ''Encyclopaedia of Type Faces.'' Cassell Paperback, London; 2001. *Lawson, Alexander S., ''

Anatomy of a Typeface ''Anatomy of a Typeface'' is a book on typefaces written by Alexander Lawson.''Anatomy of a Typeface'', Alexander Lawson, David R. Godine, 1990. Background The book is notable for devoting entire chapters to the development and uses of individual ...

''. Godine: 1990. . *Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers.'' Yale University Press: 2006. .

External links

{{Commons category, Granjon (typeface), Granjon
Granjon Font Family - by George W. JonesMyFonts web page for Granjon
Linotype typefaces Old style serif typefaces