![]() Perhaps that contributed to its relative unpopularity but it’s hard to believe that it was a significant factor in its failure. So why didn’t it catch on? Why aren’t all French books typeset in Civilité? It’s often repeated that it simply has too many sorts (characters), with numerous alternate forms and ligatures, thus making it more expensive and more complex to typeset. Although Granjon wished for his Civilité to become the national typeface of France, it never really caught on, and it never seriously competed with Roman and Italic fonts. ![]() ![]() ![]() It later came to be know as Civilité, after the civilité of etiquette books that the typeface often appeared in. Robert Granjon (1513–90) was a French type designer who, in 1557, invented a new style of typeface that was modeled on contemporary handwriting. 345 for the actual matrices, see the Museum Plantin-Moretus). All the type you see here was designed and cut by Granjon: the Civilité, the Roman, the ornaments, & the lovely Italic (its debut here see Vervliet, 2008, p. Facecies et motz subtilz, a bilingual joke book, with the French text set in Granjon’s Civilité. For two fonts that are roughly equal in (point) size, notice how much wider the Civilité is a characteristic compounded by its ornate capitals and those distinctive and freakishly wide d, u and v. Of the early books set in Civilité types, my favorite is Facecies et motz subtilz, a bilingual, French & Italian, joke-book printed by Granjon in 1559, where his Civilité is used to set the French text, opposite the Italian set in his own Italic type. Robert Granjon’s 1567 (sixth) Civilité typeface. Interestingly, just to illustrate how Civilité types had come to be associated with such books, I stumbled upon an edition of the same Erasmus book published in 1877 and, although set in Roman, a single line on its title-page is set in Civilité, a late nod to its origins. The name Civilité was not used until the eighteenth century, after their early appearance in civilité books, like Erasmus’s La civilité puérile, (‘On Civility in Children’), a young person’s guide to good manners, or etiquette. Granjon called his new typeface ‘lettres françaises’. Image thanks to the Folger Shakespeare Library & Heather Wolfe’s article The highlighted areas are written in by hand. Without my highlights, it is not immediately apparent that the above is a mix of both handwriting and typography. Manuscript or font? An example of just how closely Civilité was modeled on handwriting. Granjon wished for Civilité to be France’s national typeface, something that was instantly recognizable as French, but also practical and familiar enough to be easily readable. Looking around, Granjon saw that the Italians had their Roman and Italic (even now named after their place of origin), and the Germans their evolved Gothic, or Schwabacher. Sixteenth century Europe was host to intense linguistic and philological debates: about the standardization of language, of grammar and spelling, for example. I assume that, like the grammar books of the late 15th century, those in the 16th were invariably printed with Roman fonts.įor Granjon, his new typeface was not an aesthetic fancy. 17), but it’s worth noting that young readers would probably have been even more familiar with Roman types. If you’d like to see how these metal matrices are actually used to cast type, then watch this video of Stan Nelson at the Atelier Press It’s said that Civilité was easier to read for early readers (Carter & Vervliet, p. Left to right: X, Y, Z, a, b, b, c, c, d, d, d, d, e, e, e, f, g, g, g. Matrices for one of Granjon’s Civilité types, 1566/7. In 1557, he designed an entirely new style of typeface, one modeled closely on Secretary Hand, a popular contemporary form of Gothic cursive handwriting. In addition to designing numerous Romans and Italics, Granjon designed and cut Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Cyrillic, and Bastard types, and quite a few fleurons and ornaments. He didn’t sell cast pieces of metal type but rather he designed the more valuable punches and matrices, that he then sold to customers who could then punch and cast their own fonts. He designed and produced some 90 typefaces between about 15 (Vervliet, 2008, p. Granjon’s work as an itinerant, self-employed type designer, printer-publisher and bookseller, took him to Paris, Lyons, Antwerp, Frankfurt and Rome. In more sober terms, the brilliant typographic scholar Hendrik Vervliet described Granjon as ‘one of the best and most influential type designers of the pre-industrial period of typography’. In a top-ten list of all-time best type designers, Robert Granjon (1513–90) would be up there.
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