Claude Garamond: bio and graphic design

I just completed a project for the Art Institute of Pittsburgh about the life of typographer Claude Garamond. For this project we were asked to design a Piet Mondrian styled piece that incorporates the different styles of the typographers fonts with text from our short essay.

Claude Garamond

Claude Garamond was a French printer born in Paris in 1490. His career began as an apprentice punch-cutter and printer for Antoine Augereau in 1510. “Punch-cutter” refers to the traditional craft of cutting the master image of a typographic letter at the actual size on a blank of steel that is then used to make the matrix from which metal type is cast. Claude Garamond was the first person to master all aspects of book publishing:  type design, punch cutting, and type-founding. Because of his many skills, Garamond was well known throughout the publishing industry in France. He created many different types and was often requested by Royalty to create specific type for their documents. (PointlessArt)

By 1545, Garamond started his own publishing house and became the first independent type founder. Garamond often offered his cast moveable type to other publishers at a very affordable price. His books were meticulously crafted with attention to everything from the quality of the paper to the superb binding. He incorporated his own type into every book and concentrated on the visual beauty of every printed page. Garamond demanded clarity in his designs and wide margins to match from page to page.

After Garamond’s death in 1561, his punches made their way throughout other regions of Europe, and became extremely popular in Germany and Belgium. The readability of Garamond’s type quickly inspired other types that copied his style such as Stempel Garamond and Garamond Antiqua in the early 20^th century and, more recently, Adobe Garamond and ITC Garamond. (LinoType)

Today there are nearly hundreds of Garamond type designs, and they all contain the key traits of the original type created over 450 years ago. The character stroke-weight stress is canted, or running in a slanted direction. The head serifs look like little banners and the baseline serifs tend to be long and slightly cupped. One striking feature that is present in most all Garamond styles is found in the capitol letter T. A Garamond type can easily be spotted by noticing the bi-directional serifs on the top of the capital T. (ITCfonts)

Works Cited:

Unknown Author, “Biography on Claude Garamond” PointlessArt.com 02/09/2012

Unknown Author, “Just what makes a “Garamond” a Garamond?” LinoType.com 02/09/2012

Unknown Author, “Will the Real Garamond Please Stand Up” ITCfonts.com 02/09/2012