While human beings have been creating letters and symbols since ancient times, modern typography truly soared after the popularization of the printing press in Europe. To understand where Old Style fonts come from, and how they became popular in the first place, let’s revisit the earliest chapters in the history of typography.
Leaving Blackletter Behind
The year was 1440: Goldsmith and inventor Johannes Gutenberg had left his home city of Mainz and started experimenting with printing from a small workshop in Strasbourg, France. Hundreds of years earlier the Chinese had developed moveable type as a technology, but Gutenberg took it one step further with lead types and a special box of letter blocks called a type case.
Determined to perfect his process, Gutenberg moved back to Germany and printed his famous Forty-two-Line Bible. By 1500, printing presses had spread aggressively through Western Europe, producing more than twenty million book copies.
Gutenberg Bible, Lenox copy in the New York Public Library. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Being German, the early European printers leaned on the Blackletter style that was popular in their country at the time. The Germanic Gothic or Blackletter style is heavier, angular, and constructed with a broad nib.
From Humanist to Old Style
By the time the printing press reached (modern-day) Italy, a cultural movement called humanism was becoming popular. After centuries of prohibition, censorship, and war, Venice was leaving the Middle Ages by bringing back traditional Roman culture and values. Human achievements and independence took center stage again.
Part of that humanism involved celebrating the handwriting style traditionally found in Roman statues and monuments. There was only one problem: that style was all uppercase, therefore illegible when it came to long texts. Those characters are also known as Imperial Roman capitals or Capitalis Monumentalis.
Eusebius, Evangelica. Jenson, Venice, 1470. Via Tom Nealon, Hilobrow
These serifed letterforms became the baseline for type design. While the earliest forms preserved a distinctively humanist character, serif typefaces would become more geometric and proportional over time.
Today, we classify serif fonts based on unique features that evolved from that original Humanist style. Over time, type designers have created Old Style, Transitional, Modern, and Slab Serifs. Old Style type families were part of the first wave of refinement, and we’ll look at some of their defining features next.
Old Style Fonts: Main Features
Before Old Style fonts, Humanist (also known as Venetian) typefaces mimicked handwriting. Letters were fluid and looked a lot like a scribe or author had written them by hand. In contrast, Old Style (also known as Garalde) fonts departed from this style, looking cleaner and slightly more geometric. Rather than look like a person wrote them, Old Style fonts were created to appear more refined and mechanically made.
- Horizontal crossbars: In early Humanist fonts, crossbars were sloping or diagonal. In Old Style fonts, crossbars are completely horizontal.
- Perpendicular position: Typographers intentionally made Old Style fonts look more perpendicular, sitting slightly more upright on the baseline.
- Low weight contrast: In Old Style lettering, there is very little contrast between thick and thin strokes.
- Wedge-shaped ascenders: In Old Style fonts, the serifs on the ascenders (the part of the letter that extends up above the letter) are wedge-shaped.
- Head serifs are angled: In Old Style Roman fonts, head serifs tend to be angled instead of flat.
- Serifs are bracketed: Serifs are often bracketed, meaning they are joined to the letters’ stems through some kind of curve.
- Left-leaning axis: Old Style fonts have a left-leaning axis or stress.
Grab this handy cheatsheet summarizing some of the most important typography terms.
Download the PDFPopular Old Style Fonts
There are many Old Style Roman fonts that are available digitally today. You’re probably familiar with some of them because they are popularly used in word processing software:
- Garamond
- Caslon
- Goudy Old Style
- Palatino
Examples of Old Style Fonts on Creative Market
More and more contemporary designers are creating Old Style fonts that you can use in your projects. Some of these fonts look like classic, quintessential Old Style fonts that you’ve seen for years. Others mix up more contemporary contrast or shapes, resulting in a more unique look. Here are some of the best Old Style fonts that you can find from designers on Creative Market.
Legion
Legion is a font created by Esquivel Type Foundry. This Old Style font is designed specifically for paragraphs and bold headlines. In addition to uppercase letters and lowercase letters, the font includes numbers, punctuation, and special characters. The designer updated the font to incorporate extended Latin characters.
Gauthier FY Regular
BlackFoundry created Gauthier FY Regular to look like a contemporary Renaissance-inspired typeface. The delicate italic letterforms were inspired by the French punchcutter Robert Granjon (1513—89), which were also a key source of inspiration for the italics used in Garamond.
Carrig Roman
Carrig Roman was created by designer Paulo Goode. This font was recently redrawn and redesigned, but it was originally inspired by classic letterforms that were carved into stone. When you download Carrig Roman, you’ll get a full European character set with 410 glyphs, and alternate letterforms for capitals O, Q, R, and U. The designer recommends using it for headlines, body text, logotype, and branding.
Neftalà Pro
TipoType created Neftalà Pro and it won a TipoType First Prize in 2015. It was inspired by Pablo Neruda’s “Poema 20” and it incorporates both Baroque and Roman styles.
Design away!
Old Style fonts are one of the most essential typefaces to recognize and understand in your graphic design journey. This style exudes elegance and is ideal for projects aiming to convey legacy, heritage, and splendor. To learn more about type anatomy and classification, make sure to download this handy guide:
Grab this handy cheatsheet summarizing some of the most important typography terms.
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We've curated a list of font styles that work well together so you can design interesting type lockups in minutes.
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Brand strategist. Creating design tools to empower creative entrepreneurs. Author of the Lean Branding book. MA in Design Management from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).
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