Cochin is a

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. It was originally produced in 1912 by

Georges Peignot Georges Louis Jean Baptiste Peignot (June 24, 1872 – September 28, 1915) was a French type designer, type founder, and manager of the G. Peignot & Fils foundry until his death in combat during World War I. Father of four children (includi ...

for the Paris foundry

G. Peignot et Fils G. Peignot et Fils foundry (Fonderie G. Peignot et Fils) was a French type foundry, typographic foundry, established in 1898 and closed down between 1919 and 1923 after a merger to become Deberny & Peignot, Deberny & Peignot foundry. Led by George ...

(future

Deberny & Peignot Deberny & Peignot (Fonderie Deberny et Peignot) was a French type foundry, created by the 1923 merger of G. Peignot & Fils and Deberny & Cie. It was bought by the Haas Type Foundry (Switzerland) in 1972, which in turn was merged into D. Stempel A ...

) and was based on the copperplate engravings of 18th century French artist

Charles-Nicolas Cochin Charles-Nicolas Cochin (22 February 1715 – 29 April 1790) was a French engraver, designer, writer, and art critic. To distinguish him from his father of the same name, he is variously called Charles-Nicolas Cochin le Jeune (the Younger), Cha ...

, from which the typeface also takes its name. The font has a small

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 ...

with long ascenders. Georges Peignot also created the design 'Nicolas-Cochin' as a looser variation in the same style.

Characteristics

With a very low x-height and delicate design, Cochin is described by

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 ...

an example of a style of lettering and graphic design popular in the early twentieth century in several countries. Similar designs are Astrée and later

Bernhard Modern Bernhard Modern is a modern style classification serif typeface designed by Lucian Bernhard in 1937 for the American Type Founders (ATF). Lucian Bernhard's Bernhard Modern typeface was the ATF's response to the many popular old-style engraving f ...

and

Koch-Antiqua Koch-Antiqua is a serif typeface intended for decorative and display use, designed by Rudolf Koch and published by the Klingspor Type Foundry from 1922 onwards. It is a delicate face with a low x-height, intended for decorative printing rather tha ...

, as well as several designs by

Frederic Goudy Frederic William Goudy (, March 8, 1865 – May 11, 1947) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers and ...

such as Pabst and Goudy Modern. It had considerable success, for example becoming available on Monotype's

hot metal typesetting In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mol ...

system in the United States (Tracy describes this version as disappointing due to changes to the italic) and was also sold by

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 ...

. In 1927 Monotype UK produced a typeface Cochin Series 165, Roman and Italic, based on an 1812-face Cochin 18c of the Peignot-foundry. The Monotype font has fewer high ascenders compared with other Cochin-fonts. This makes Series-165 more usable for long texts.

Releases

In 1977 Cochin was adapted and expanded by

Matthew Carter Matthew Carter (born 1 October 1937) is a British type designer.Christophe_Plantin.html" ;"title="y Christophe Plantin">y Christophe Plantin' in typography's golden age was in perfect condition (some muddle aside) long withPlantin's accoun ...

for Linotype, and this four-weight version is well-known today as a system font on

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

. Other companies issued versions of the design in the metal type era. The original and 'Nicolas-Cochin' designs were also digitised by LTC and Linotype, and other versions are available from others including

URW++ URW Type Foundry GmbH (formerly URW++ Design & Development GmbH) is a type foundry based in Hamburg, Germany. The foundry has its own library with more than 500 font families. The company specializes in customized corporate typefaces and the d ...

, which adds an additional black weight not available from Linotype.

Sol Hess Sol Hess (born 1886, Philadelphia, PA – d. 1953) was an American typeface designer. After a three-year scholarship course at Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Design, he began at Lanston Monotype in 1902, rising to typographic manag ...

designed a bold design in the same style. Badr is an Arabic font from Linotype by Osman Husseini which uses Cochin for its Latin alphabet. Cochin had a display open-face companion, with an empty space in the middle of the letter, named Moreau-le-jeune. This was sold as "Caslon Open Face" in the United States. A derivative design with boosted x-height is Academy Engraved by

Letraset Letraset was a company known mainly for manufacturing sheets of typefaces and other artwork elements using the dry transfer method. Letraset has been acquired by the Colart group and become part of its subsidiary Winsor & Newton. Corporate histor ...

Gallery

File:Nicholas Cochin Type Specimen (8090183979).jpg, Nicholas Cochin File:Nicholas Cochin italic.jpg, Nicholas Cochin italic File:Cochin Outline Initials.jpg, Outline capitals sold with Cochin

Uses

The typeface is used in the ''

Harry Potter ''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven fantasy literature, fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young Magician (fantasy), wizard, Harry Potter (character), Harry Potter, and his friends ...

'' covers produced by

Bloomsbury Publishing Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. Bloomsbury's head office is located in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a U ...

. Cochin is used in ''

The Spiderwick Chronicles ''The Spiderwick Chronicles'' is a series of children's fantasy books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. They chronicle the adventures of the Grace children, twins Simon and Jared and their older sister Mallory, after they move into the Spid ...

'' (written by

Holly Black Holly Black (''née'' Riggenbach; born November 10, 1971) is an American writer and editor best known for her children's and young adult fiction. Her most recent work is the ''New York Times'' bestselling young adult ''Folk of the Air'' series. ...

and

Tony DiTerlizzi Tony M. DiTerlizzi (born September 6, 1969) is an American fantasy artist, children's book creator, and motion picture producer. In the gaming industry, he is best known for his work in the collectible card game '' Magic: The Gathering'' and on ...

). The Editorial Nascimento of Santiago Chile, used Cochin in many of its 6500 publications, which included books by Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral from 1923 onwards. Cochin was previously a font option in

iBooks iBooks may refer to: * iBooks, the former name of Apple Books. * ibooks Inc., a book and comics publishing company founded by Byron Preiss Byron Preiss (April 11, 1953 – July 9, 2005)iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

but was replaced in version 1.5 when

Athelas This list of fictional plants describes invented plants that appear in works of fiction. In fiction *Audrey Jr.: a man-eating plant in the 1960 film ''The Little Shop of Horrors'' **Audrey II: a singing, fast-talking alien plant with a taste for ...

ITC Charter Bitstream Charter is a serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter in 1987 for Bitstream Inc. Charter is based on Pierre-Simon Fournier’s characters, originating from the 18th century. Classified by Bitstream as a transitional-serif typeface (Bi ...

Iowan Old Style Iowan Old Style is a digital serif typeface designed by John Downer and released by Bitstream in 1991. Iowan Old Style is inspired by serif typefaces from Renaissance Italy, now called the “ old-style” or Venetian model of typeface design, ...

, and

Seravek Seravek is a sans-serif typeface family designed by Eric Olson and released in 2007. Olson described Seravek as having a neutral design of "near silence". Seravek is a member of the humanist style of sans-serifs, with features such as a true ital ...

were added. The English alternative rock band Keane used the typeface for their first official logo.

References

External links

* {{OS X typefaces Serif typefaces Display typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1912