Body-text fonts, pt. 44: the Fell types
Abel now climbs stairs.
Too, too soon.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Samuel has thought up a new Agatha Christie novel: Bossy (!).
“It’s about one man who kills another man in the Olden Days.”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
These fonts are available, gratis, from Google:
IM Fell Double Pica
IM Fell DW Pica
IM Fell English
IM Fell French Canon
IM Fell Great Primer
They’re digitizations, by Igino Marini, of types “bequeathed to the University of Oxford by John Fell in 1686.”
The fonts aren’t especially alike, nor do they work equally well for typesetting just any content. One must use them very judiciously. Their attraction is that they’re VENERABLE-LOOKING and ROUGH.
(DISTRESSED is another word that comes to mind, as in: “distressed blue jeans.”)
Even so, the fonts, when properly sized and spaced, are very legible.
Whenever I see them – or their doppelgängers (more on one doppelgänger in a moment) – it’s in some pretentious children’s book, e.g. The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge by M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin.
(The story is charming; the pretentiousness is due to the number of pages.)
(Spurge, an elfin emissary to the goblin capital – and a spy – is hosted by a goblin scholar, Werfel, who tries his darnednest to be hospitable but can’t help committing faux pas.)
The font in this sample is actually a commercial font that looks like IM Fell Great Primer. It’s surprisingly OK as body text, isn’t it?
Just don’t go hog wild and use Fell fonts in all your documents.
Too, too soon.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Samuel has thought up a new Agatha Christie novel: Bossy (!).
“It’s about one man who kills another man in the Olden Days.”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
These fonts are available, gratis, from Google:
IM Fell Double Pica
IM Fell DW Pica
IM Fell English
IM Fell French Canon
IM Fell Great Primer
They’re digitizations, by Igino Marini, of types “bequeathed to the University of Oxford by John Fell in 1686.”
The fonts aren’t especially alike, nor do they work equally well for typesetting just any content. One must use them very judiciously. Their attraction is that they’re VENERABLE-LOOKING and ROUGH.
(DISTRESSED is another word that comes to mind, as in: “distressed blue jeans.”)
Even so, the fonts, when properly sized and spaced, are very legible.
Whenever I see them – or their doppelgängers (more on one doppelgänger in a moment) – it’s in some pretentious children’s book, e.g. The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge by M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin.
(The story is charming; the pretentiousness is due to the number of pages.)
(Spurge, an elfin emissary to the goblin capital – and a spy – is hosted by a goblin scholar, Werfel, who tries his darnednest to be hospitable but can’t help committing faux pas.)
The font in this sample is actually a commercial font that looks like IM Fell Great Primer. It’s surprisingly OK as body text, isn’t it?
Just don’t go hog wild and use Fell fonts in all your documents.