Body-text fonts, pt. 11: Vendôme
His departure is old news, but I’d like to record my gratitude to the Argentinian Gustavo Alfaro, Ecuador’s manager during this last World Cup cycle. An astute tactician and a careful mentor to young pros; by most accounts, a good person.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
This month I exhibit a bizarre typeface. It appears as body text in just one of my volumes, a Random House Value Publishing omnibus of E. M. Forster’s novels (obtained last weekend at Goodwill).
The italics are severely slanted.
That’s how they were designed to look.
[Update, 27 January: I now believe this isn’t a sample of true italics. Here’s a website where you can buy cheap font files of Vendôme. Images of body text are provided. Roman text looks like this; italics look like this.
You can see the italics aren’t just slanted versions of the romans. Compare the roman and italic uppercase “A,” as well as the roman and italic lowercase “b”: the romans have more serifs. And in the italic lowercase “g,” the lower and upper storeys are farther apart than in the roman “g.” On the other hand, all these differences are absent from the text sample taken from the Forster omnibus.
Of course, not every genuine Vendôme will look exactly like Fontsite’s Vendôme.]
Karin didn’t bother with the typesetting. She listened to a recording of the book. Cecil Vyse and Cousin Charlotte irked her equally.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Daniel sleeps; I type.
He often goes to bed like this. I put on soothing Italian soundtrack music and lie with him. He rolls and jumps on me; then, declining suddenly, he “gives up the ghost.”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
This month I exhibit a bizarre typeface. It appears as body text in just one of my volumes, a Random House Value Publishing omnibus of E. M. Forster’s novels (obtained last weekend at Goodwill).
The italics are severely slanted.
That’s how they were designed to look.
[Update, 27 January: I now believe this isn’t a sample of true italics. Here’s a website where you can buy cheap font files of Vendôme. Images of body text are provided. Roman text looks like this; italics look like this.
You can see the italics aren’t just slanted versions of the romans. Compare the roman and italic uppercase “A,” as well as the roman and italic lowercase “b”: the romans have more serifs. And in the italic lowercase “g,” the lower and upper storeys are farther apart than in the roman “g.” On the other hand, all these differences are absent from the text sample taken from the Forster omnibus.
Of course, not every genuine Vendôme will look exactly like Fontsite’s Vendôme.]
Karin didn’t bother with the typesetting. She listened to a recording of the book. Cecil Vyse and Cousin Charlotte irked her equally.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Daniel sleeps; I type.
He often goes to bed like this. I put on soothing Italian soundtrack music and lie with him. He rolls and jumps on me; then, declining suddenly, he “gives up the ghost.”
