Typeface Revivals

From retro showcard display designs, to modern reworkings of classic typefaces, to virtual clones of antique fonts, there are more typeface revivals available to graphic designers today than ever before. Maybe Fred Goudy was right, "The old guys stole all our good ideas."

Although Goudy had nothing to do with this project, ITC just released an upgraded and enlarged version of the ITC Stone® Sans typeface family. The original plan was to add some condensed designs to the existing family, and call it a day. Once Sumner Stone, the designer of the original ITC Stone Sans and the new revival, got into the project, however, he realized that more extensive design improvement were called for. The end result is a completely new addition to the ITC Stone super family, consisting of 24 typefaces in the OpenType™ font format.

A little over two years ago, ITC also released an enlarged and improved version of the ITC Franklin Gothic™ typeface family. Called simply ITC Franklin™, the new design, created by David Berlow, has 48 designs and is also available as OpenType fonts. The new designs range from the very willowy Thin to the robust Ultra – with Light, Medium Bold and Black weights in between. Each weight is also available in Narrow, Condensed and Compressed variants, and each design has a complementary Italic.

Prior to these two designs, ITC had not released upgraded or improved versions of typefaces in its library. It has, from time to time, added new weights and proportions to existing families but never reworked the basic designs from scratch.

My question to you is: would you like to see more ITC typeface re-released to higher standards of design excellence – and would you like to seen existing ITC typeface families enlarged to contain a broader range of weights and proportions?

Allan Haley is Director of Words & Letters at Monotype Imaging. Here he is responsible for strategic planning and creative implementation of just about everything related to typeface designs.