T I M E S N E W R O M A N

T I M E S N E W R O M A Nb a s t a r d f o n t

Times New Roman made it’s debut in Britains newspaper The Times. It was comissioned after Stanley Morison wrote an article criticizing the typography of The Times as dated .INTRO

Y O U R D A D D Y ?

While we know when the Times New Roman first appeared, who fathered the font is a

mystery. At least three different individuals are said to be its creator or have contributed

to its creation. There are at least two different stories as to how it came to exist. STORY I

After criticizing the typography employed by The Times in 1931, Stanley Morison commissioned

artist Victor Lardent of the English branch of Monotype to revise an older font by the name of Plantin.

The revision became known as Times New Roman and first made The Times newspaper on the third day of October in 1932.

S T O R Y I I

Ac-cord-

ing to M i k e

Parke r, a world-

wide ex-pert on type,

William Star-ling Burgess is

the true father of Times New

Roman. Bur-gess was born of a

wealthy Boston fam-ily in 1878, and made

a life for himself as a naval and aeronautical

designer. He built yachts for the America’s Cup and

aircraft for the Wright Bros. Before all this however, Parker

believes, Burgess dabbled shortly in typography. In his posession,

Parker has a brass pattern plate bear-ing the familiar form of a large capital

Times New Roman B. The technology used to create this plate, Parker says, was

no longer in use af-ter 1915. Gerald Giampa, a Canadian Master Printer, pro-vided this plate in 1990 to Parker after purchasing the rem-nants of the Lanston Monotype company. Delving in to the company’s archives, Giampa claimed to have come upon doc-uments that refer to a typeface Number 54 - the font Parker con-tends we now know as Times New Roman.

B U R N E D , B O M B E D , F L O O D E D

Such has been the fate of most all evidence that might give us a clue as to who really is responsible for the creation of Times New Roman.

In 1918, a fire tore through Burgess’ shipyard, destroying any evidence of his activities during the time in which Parker says he designed the original concept for the font. A bomb blast in 1941 near Monotype Corporation’s London offices destroyed much of the evidence of Morisons activities during the redesign of The Times typeface. The Lanston Monotype archives in Giampa’s posession were all that remained. His home was flooded in 2000, and a hundred years worth of printing history was lost forever.

A second Lanston Monotype archive resides at The Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, but due to asbestos and lead contamination, it has been placed off limits.

strawberryANATOMY

MILK

1. x-height2. cap height3. baseline4. stem5. bow

l6. serif7. descender8. ligature9. finial10. term

inal11. spine12. ascender13. uppercase14. crossbar15. sm

all capital16. counter17. low

ercase

1

2

3