Body-text fonts, pt. 21: Plantin
Karin bought a babies’ bilingual board book with pictures of the characters from El Chavo del Ocho.
I read it often to Daniel, four or five times in a row. I read it in Spanish and in English and say all the characters’ names.
Tonight, poor Karin tried to read it to Daniel, and she didn’t know all the names and Daniel threw a fit.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
This early-20th-century typeface is my all-time favorite for body text. A stone-cold classic of hot metal type. Look at that glorious x-height. Excellent for printing on lousy paper (mass-market paperbacks, newspaper, etc.). Beats the pants off Times and its ilk. My favorite letter is the uppercase “R,” and the uppercase “K” has the same badass tail. Kudos to “E,” “M,” “N,” “T,” and “W” also. Weight-wise, I prefer the light/semibold pairing to the regular/bold pairing, at least in the larger sizes.
The text sample, from Jane Eyre, describes why we didn’t go trick-or-treating this Halloween.
It used to be normal for Puffin Classics to be set in Plantin, but lately they’ve been boringly set in Minion.
I read it often to Daniel, four or five times in a row. I read it in Spanish and in English and say all the characters’ names.
Tonight, poor Karin tried to read it to Daniel, and she didn’t know all the names and Daniel threw a fit.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
This early-20th-century typeface is my all-time favorite for body text. A stone-cold classic of hot metal type. Look at that glorious x-height. Excellent for printing on lousy paper (mass-market paperbacks, newspaper, etc.). Beats the pants off Times and its ilk. My favorite letter is the uppercase “R,” and the uppercase “K” has the same badass tail. Kudos to “E,” “M,” “N,” “T,” and “W” also. Weight-wise, I prefer the light/semibold pairing to the regular/bold pairing, at least in the larger sizes.
The text sample, from Jane Eyre, describes why we didn’t go trick-or-treating this Halloween.
It used to be normal for Puffin Classics to be set in Plantin, but lately they’ve been boringly set in Minion.