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| Typeface | Caslon |
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| Category | Serif |
| Classifications | Old style |
| Designer(s) | William Caslon I |
| Foundry | Caslon Type Foundry |
| Variations | Adobe Caslon Big Caslon CC LTC Caslon Founders Caslon ITC Founders Caslon Caslon 225 Caslon 471 Caslon 540 |
| Shown here | Adobe Caslon by Carol Twombly |
Caslon refers to a number of serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I (1692–1766), and various revivals thereof. Caslon's earliest design dates to 1734. Caslon is cited to be the first original typeface of English origin, but some type historians point out the close similarity of Caslon's design to the Dutch Fell types [4].
Caslon shares the irregular characteristic of Venetian ("antiqua") and Dutch Baroque types. It is characterized by short ascenders and descenders, bracketed serifs, moderately-high contrast, robust texture, and moderate modulation of stroke. The A has a concave hollow at the apex, the G is without a spur. Caslon italic has a rhythmic calligraphic stoke. Characters A, V, and W have an acute slant. In Caslon 540 and 471 the lowercase italic p, q, v, w, and z all have a suggestion of a swash.
The Caslon types were distributed throughout the British Empire, including British North America. Much of the decayed appearance of early American printing is thought to be due to oxidation caused by long exposure to seawater during transport from England to the Americas. Caslon's types were immediately successful and used in many historic documents, including the U.S. Declaration of Independence. After William Caslon I’s death the use of his types diminished, but saw a revival between 1840–80 as a part of the British Arts and Crafts movement. The Caslon design is still widely used today. For many years a common rule of thumb of printers and typesetters was "when in doubt, use Caslon," partifcularly if no font was specified.
With the rise of hot metal typesetting beginning at the close of the 19th century, existing foundry metal typefaces had to be adapted to specific typesetting technology. This was true again with phototypesetting, mostly in the 1960s and 1970s, and then again with digital typesetting technology, mostly since the mid 1980s. As a result of that, and the lack of trademark on the name "Caslon" by itself, there are many typefaces called "Caslon" with some other distinguishing element.
Recent digital versions include Adobe Caslon by Carol Twombly (1990, the most widely used version), and H.W. Caslon & Company's "Founder's Caslon," digitized by Justin Howes (1998) which more closely follows William Caslon's original design, with the addition of "ct" and "st" ligatures not found in the original.citation needed
References
- Carter, Rob, Day, Ben, and Phillip Meggs. Typography Design: Form and Communication. John Willey & Sons, Inc.: 1993. ISBN 0-471-28430-0
- Friedl, Friedrich, Nicolaus Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography, An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques throughout History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7
- Lawson, Alexander S., Anatomy of a Typeface. Godine: 1990. ISBN 978-0879233334.
- Meggs, Phillip B, McKelvey, Roy. Revival of the Fittest: Digital Versions of Classic Typefaces. RC Publications, Inc.2000. ISBN 1-883915-08-2
- [4] Nesbitt, Alexander The History and Technique of Lettering (c) 1998, Dover Publications, Inc. ISBN 0486402819 , The Dover edition is an abridged and corrected republication of the work originally published in 1950 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. under the title Lettering: The History and Technique of Lettering as Design.
- Updike, Daniel Berkeley. Printing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use. Dover Publications, Inc.: 1980. ISBN 0-486-23929-2
See also
- Caslon Roman, a Unicode typeface (for computer), developed by George Williams.
- History of typography
External links
