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Philosophy in the Middle Ages

Contributed by Stephen Coles on Aug 5th, 2015. Artwork published in .
Philosophy in the Middle Ages
Source: www.flickr.com Image via “Steve” on Flickr. License: All Rights Reserved.

Trooper Roman with some uncommon swash alternates (or modifications).

Typefaces

  • Trooper Roman
  • Palatino

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9 Comments on “Philosophy in the Middle Ages

  1. I think this is actually Alphabet Innovations’s Mountie, which had swashes like this, but was otherwise a knock off of Trooper.

  2. Ah, thanks Mark! I’ll scan my specimen of Mountie when I get back to Oakland.

  3. Blythwood says:
    Mar 27th, 2016 11:18 pm

    And it also looks like one of the early versions of Palatino (from when it was intended as a display face, perhaps?) Two swash 'T’s, narrow spacing all round and the 't’ seems higher than on the digital version. No centre serif on the 'E’ on 'James’ either.

    Nice italic 'Th’ ligature, too. I wonder if it was designed to fit like that?

  4. The ‘Th’ ligature was included in the original foundry version of Palatino-Kursiv (1951). So was a number of swash alternates (“Zierbuchstaben”, i.e. decorative letters), incl. 11 caps and the lowercase letters e k z. In 1953, a dedicated set of swash capitals was added. These Palatino-Kursiv-Schwungversalien include a full set of caps (except for C I O Q U X Y, which seem to replicate the default italic glyphs), plus German umlauts and an alternate ampersand. Some of the swash caps were revised for this release, others appear to be identical.

    See the glyph sets on the standardized specimen cards by D. Stempel AG, as reproduced in Hans Reichardt (ed.): Bleisatzschriften des 20. Jahrhunderts aus Deutschland. Offenbach: Spatium (2008)

    Palatino-Kursiv in Musterkartei DIN 16507, D. Stempel AG

    Palatino-Kursiv-Schwungversalien, Musterkartei DIN 16507, D. Stempel Ag

  5. You can see more Palatino swashes in use here.

  6. Blythwood says:
    Mar 30th, 2016 5:50 am

    Thanks for this!

    Is there a good source on why changes to Palatino were made? Reading between the lines of what I’ve read, I get the feeling that Zapf and Linotype essentially concluded “well, if people are going to use it as a book font, we’re going to have to tone it down for that” and took away some of the eccentricities – but I’ve never seen anything that explicitly says this. (Anatomy of a Typeface sort of does – with the detail that it was Dwiggins’ suggestion to Zapf! – but not anything else).

  7. And it also looks like one of the early versions of Palatino (from when it was intended as a display face, perhaps?)

    Palatino was not exclusively intended as a display face — the foundry version by D. Stempel AG (1950) was cut in sizes as small as 5pt, and Linotype matrices were produced in sizes from 6pt to 12pt. However, it is correct that Palatino was originally intended primarily as jobbing face (as opposed to a book face), and its weight ratios determined accordingly.[1] The lighter and slightly narrower Aldus (1954; working title Leichte Palatino) is the dedicated book version.

    1) Hermann Zapf, Gedanken und Probleme beim Entwurf von Werkschriften, D. Stempel AG. In “Philobiblon”, 4/1958.

    Is there a good source on why changes to Palatino were made?

    From Nikolaus J. Weichselbaumer, Der Typograph Hermann Zapf: Eine Werkbiographie, De Gruyter Saur, 2015, p115f (my translation):

    On his first visit to the United States in 1951, Zapf discussed Palatino with W.A. Dwiggins and typographer Franz C. Hess, among others. On their suggestion, Zapf gave “the somewhat emphatically calligraphic letters ‘E’. ‘F’, ‘S’, ‘q’, ‘p’, ‘s’, ‘v’, ‘w’ and ‘y’ in Palatino-Antiqua […] another, more traditional form for the Anglo-American sales region.”[2] In 1956[3] the American Linotype finally added Palatino to their program. The foundry version was supplied by Stempel itself. The American special letterforms were subsequently offered as alternates in other markets, too.

    2) Quoted from Über Alphabete. Gedanken und Anmerkungen beim Schriftentwerfen, Frankfurt am Main, 1960.

    3) Note that this is after Aldus was released, which sits somewhere between the original Palatino and the American alternates, in regard to calligraphic peculiarities.

  8. Thanks, Tobi! Your image somehow didn’t come through. I add it here:

    I understand that this is a version sold by Quad Typographers, Inc., New York City, yes? It could be their alias for the aforementioned Mountie by Phil Martin’s Alphabet Innovations.

    See also Times Modern swash, another different swashified version of Trooper Roman:

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