This article is about the typeface. Caslon Caslon Type Foundry Variations many Shown here Adobe Caslon by Caslon is the name given to designed by c. Caslon worked as an ofthe masters used to stamp the moulds or used to cast metal type. He worked in the tradition of what is now called serif letter design, that produced letters with a relatively organic structure resembling with a. Caslon established a tradition of engraving type in London, which previously had not been common, and was influenced by the imported typefaces that were popular in England at the time. His typefaces established a strong reputation for their quality and their attractive appearance, suitable for extended passages of text. The letterforms of Caslon's include an 'A' with a concave hollow at top left and a 'G' without a downwards-pointing spur at bottom right. The sides of the 'M' are straight. The 'W' adobe caslon pro three terminals at the top and the 'b' has a small tapered stroke ending at bottom left. However, Caslon created subtly different designs of letter at different sizes, with increasing levels of fine detail and sharp contrast in stroke weight at larger sizes. Caslon's larger-size roman fonts have two serifs on the 'C', while his smaller-size versions have one half-arrow serif only at top right. InCaslon's h folds inwards and the A is sharply slanted. The Q, T v, w, and z all have in the original design, something not all revivals follow. The italic 'J' has a crossbar and a rotated casting was used by Caslon in many sizes on his specimens to form the. Caslon's typefaces were popular in his lifetime and beyond, and after a brief period of eclipse in the early nineteenth century returned to popularity, particularly for setting printed body text and books. Many revivals exist, with varying faithfulness to Caslon's original design. Modern Caslon revivals also often add features such as a matching and 'lining' numbers at the height of capital letters, neither of which were used in Caslon's time. William Caslon's specimen sheet dated 1734 but actually issued from 1738 onwards. Some of the types shown were not cut by Caslon, most notably the French Canon roman probably cut by. Caslon began his career in London as an apprentice engraver of ornamental designs on firearms and other metalwork. According to printer and historianthe main source on Caslon's life, the accuracy of his work came to the attention of prominent London printers, who advanced him money to carve for printing, first for exotic languages and then as his reputation developed for the Latin alphabet. Punchcutting was a difficult technique and many of the techniques used were kept secret by punchcutters or passed on from father to son. Adobe caslon pro would later follow this practice himself, according to Nichols teaching his son his methods privately while locked in a room where nobody could watch them. As British printers had little success or experience of making their own types, they were forced to use equipment bought from the Netherlands, or France, and Caslon's types are therefore clearly influenced by the popular Dutch typefaces of his period. Caslon's pica replaces it in his printing from 1725…Caslon's Great Primer roman, first used in 1728, a type that was much admired in the twentieth century, is clearly related to the Text Romeyn of Voskens, a type of the early seventeenth century used by several London printers and now attributed to the punch-cutter Nicolas Briot of Gouda. And yet it is so soundly made that words that are set in it keep their shape and are comfortably readable. It is a type that works best in the narrow measure of a two-column page or in quite modest octavos. He publicised his type adobe caslon pro contributing a specimen sheet towhich has often been often cut out by antiquarian book dealers and sold separately. While not used extensively in Europe, Caslon types were distributed throughout the British Empire, including British North America, where they were used on the printing adobe caslon pro. Besides regular text fonts, Caslon cut or 'Gothic' types and sold some earlier ones from older foundrieswhich were also printed on his specimen. These could be used for purposes such as title pages, emphasis and. Bold type did not exist in Caslon's time, although some of his larger-size fonts are quite bold. One criticism of some Caslon-style typefaces has been a concern that the capitals are too thick in design and stand out too much, making for an uneven colour on the page. He cited dissatisfaction with the style as an incentive for becoming more involved in type design around 1911, when he created as an alternative. The Fry type foundry's imitations of first above and then Caslon type belowshown in a specimen attached to an edition of The Printer's Grammar, 1787. The printer and social reformer wrote in 1825: At the commencement of the 18th century the native talent of the was so little prized by the printers of the metropolis, that they were in the habit of importing founts from Holland. The adobe caslon pro edition of 1852 was printed in Caslon type, then just coming back into fashion. The goal was to achieve a period feel appropriate to its early eighteenth-century setting. Interest in eighteenth-century printing returned in the nineteenth century with the rise of theand Caslon's types returned to popularity in books and fine printing among companies such as theas well as display use in situations such as advertising. Caslon was often used for in the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom, for example the famous edition ofpublished by in 1847 and printed by the. Fine printing presses, notably thebought original Caslon type from the Caslon foundry; copies of these matrices were also made by. From the 1860s new types began to appear in a style similar to Caslon's, starting from 's of c. The Caslon foundry itself covertly cut new swash capitals and replaced some sizes with new, cleaner versions. In the United States, Caslons became almost a genre, modified expanded with new styles such as bold, condensed, inline or with modifications such as shortened descenders to fit American common line, or lining figures. Many foundries cut or, in many cases, pirated their own versions. By the 1920s, offered a large range of styles, some numbered rather than named. A series of modifications has given most modern Bookman digitisations a somewhat exaggerated appearance with extremely high very unlike the original Caslon. The companies Linotype, Monotype, Intertype and Ludlow, which sold machines that cast type under the control of a keyboard, brought out their own Caslon releases. According to book designera second decline in Caslon's popularity in Britain did, however, set in during the twentieth century due to the arrival of revivals of other old-style and transitional designs from Monotype and Linotype. These includedand related faces such asand. Caslon type again entered a new technology withmostly in the 1960s and 1970s, and then again with digital typesetting technology. Many of Caslon's original punches and matrices survived in the collection of the Caslon company along with many replacement and additional charactersand are now part of the and collections in Britain. Copies held by the Paris office of the Caslon company, the Fonderie Caslon, were transferred to the collection of the Musée de l'Imprimerie in Nantes. Scholarly research on Caslon's type has been carried out by historians including, and. It was based adobe caslon pro types provided by the H. Caslon company, although some of these were re-engraved around the end of the nineteenth century rather than being Caslon's original work. The last lineal descendent of Caslon, Henry William Caslon, brought in Thomas White Smith as a new manager shortly before Caslon's death in 1874. Smith took over the company and instructed his sons to change their surnames to Caslon in order to provide an appearance of continuity. It continued to issue specimens from top printers including until the 1920s. Some Caslon faces were augmented by adding new features, in particular swash capitals for historicist printing. From around 1887 the type was sold with additional swash capitals. Due to the cachet of the Caslon name, some of the recuttings and modifications of the original Caslon types were apparently not publicly admitted. Caslon company also licensed to other printers matrices made byalthough some companies may also have made unauthorized copies. Linotype's has been digitised and released by Bitstream. Caslon's larger-size fonts had two adobe caslon pro on the 'C' rather than one. Caslon left them in 1766. It was apparently cast from electrotypes held by American Type Founders' precursors. Note the difficulty of designing a swash 'I' that does not resemble a 'J'. Caslon 540 was a second American Type Founders version with shortened to allow tighter linespacing. The italic adobe caslon pro distributed by with a matching set of swashes. As a result, this often became sold or used without the regular or roman style of this revival. BitStream sells Caslon 3 under the name of Caslon Bold with its Caslon 540 release. Russian studio ParaType have released both with Cyrillic glyphs. It had a higher x-height and was intended to offer an italic more complementary to the roman. It has remained popular since and has been digitised by Monotype. It is based on Caslon's own specimen pages printed between 1734 and 1770 and is a member of the programme. It added many features now standard in high-quality digital fonts, such as small caps, old style figures, swash letters, ligatures, alternate letters, fractions, subscripts and superscripts, and matching ornaments. adobe caslon pro Adobe Caslon is used for body text in and is one of the two official typefaces of the. A modification is used on Adobe caslon pro. It is also available with Adobe's programme, in some weights for free. These have a unique design with dramatic stroke contrast, complementary but very different to Caslon's text faces; one was apparently originally created by rather than Caslon. The typeface is intended for use at 18pt and above. The standard weight is bundled with Apple's operating system in a release including and alternates such as the. It is used by magazine and the. This family include fonts in regular and bold weights, with fractions, ligatures, small caps regular and regular italic onlyswashes regular italic weight onlyand Central European characters. A notable feature is that like some hot metal releases of Caslon, two separate options for descenders are provided for all styles: long descenders creating a more elegant designs or short allowing tighter linespacing. Although not aimed at being fully authentic in every respect, the typeface closely follows Caslon's original specimen sheet in many respects. The weight is heavier than many earlier revivals, to compensate for changes in printing processes, and the italic is less slanted with variation in stroke angle than on many other Caslon releases. Berkson described his design choices in an extensive article series. Released byit includes bold and bold italic designs, and a complete feature set across all weights, including bold small caps and swash italic alternates as well as optional shorter descenders and a 'modernist' italic option to turn off adobe caslon pro on lower-case letters and reduce the slant on the 'A' for a more spare appearance. It is currently used in magazine and by. A notable feature of Caslon's structure is its widely splayed T, which can space awkwardly with an 'h' afterwards. Accordingly, an emerging tradition among digital releases is to offer a 'Th' ligature, inspired by a tradition in calligraphy, to achieve tighter letterspacing. He used the resources of the in London to thoroughly research William Caslon and his types. Unlike previous digital revivals, adobe caslon pro family closely follows the tradition of building separate typefaces intended for different sizes. Distressing varies by style, matching the effect of metal type, with large optical sizes offering the cleanest appearance. Following the original Caslon types, it does not include bold typefaces, but uses old style figures for all numbers. Caslon Old Face is a typeface with multiple optical sizes, including 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 22, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 60, 72, 96 points. Each font has small capitals, long esses and swash characters. The 96 point font came in roman only and without small capitals. Caslon Old Face was released in July 2001. Caslon Ornaments is a typeface containing ornament glyphs. A selection of the types used on the United States Declaration of Independence. However, following the death of Justin Howes, the revived H. Most have no connection to William Caslon's own work. This decorative serif typeface was originally called Fifteenth Century, but later renamed. It is not generally considered to be a member of the Caslon family of typefaces, because its design appears unrelated, and the Caslon name was only applied retroactively. It was replaced in 1742, the only one of the roman types to be abandoned in this way. Journal of the Printing Historical Society: 66—81. Journal of the Printing Historical Society. As far as we know, all of the Chiswell Street specimens dated '1734' were issued in various editions of the Chambers Cyclopedia from 1738 to 1753. In Mosley, James; Re, Margaret; Drucker, Johanna; Carter, Matthew. Journal of the Printing Historical Society. Trade Union and Social History. William Caslon, Master of Letters. Fry and Son, which was begun in 1764, and has been continued with great perseverance and assiduity, and at a very considerable expense. The plan on which they first sat out, was an improvement of the Types of the late Mr Baskerville of Birmingham, eminent for his ingenuity in this line, as also for his curious Printing, many proofs of which are extant, and much admired: But the shape of Mr. In 1907 had recast this Caslon look-alike from original matrices and began to sell it under the name of Georgian Old Face. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Journal of the Printing Historical Society. Bulletin of the Printing Historical Society 30. Stephenson Blake: the last of the Old English typefounders 1st ed. Elizabeth, New Jersey: American Type Founders. A history of Cambridge University Press 1. The Complete Typographer: A Manual for Designing with Type 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River: Person Prentice Hall. Archived from on July 24, 2012. Caslon and Company Limited Archive image from 2004. Caslon and Company Limited Archive image from 2004. Caslon and Company Limited Archive image from 2004. Caslon and Company Limited Archive image from 2004. Revival of the Fittest: Digital Versions of Classic Typefaces. Printing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use. The 20th century Caslon company at its height, including many sample settings. Included with Commercial Art magazine. Caslon specimen of 1924 is similar. Includes many examples of American releases of Caslon and sample settings in full-colour printing.
