Out of the five classic typefaces my favorite font is Baskerville, and my second favorite is Helvetica. Even though all the fonts seem very similar, Baskerville stands out to me because the sculpted  serif, and the contrast between the thickness and thinness is very attractive and elegant to me. I think overall it’s a beautiful font and I like the curved brackets. Baskerville has a lot of characters and design to it, so it’s eye-catching to me, unlike Bodoni which seems like a plainer, simpler version of Baskerville. Even though this font is from the 1700’s it does not appear to be outdated, and I think it’s super interesting that Benjamin Franklin was a fan of John Baskerville’s fonts. Helvetica is my second favorite because I like how simple and plain it is, yet it’s so modern looking that I’m not bored looking at it. It’s so creative and different that the dot on the “i” is a square. As I’m typing this I’m realizing that this is Helvetica font too. It’s everywhere and I did not even realize but it’s so subtle and not in your face. I like how clean cut it is, and legible it is.

Century vs Garamond
My favorite typeface out of the five classic typefaces is Century. One of the first qualities that popped out the most is that Century is very easy to read. In fact, it is a very popular typeface because of its legibility. I picked Garamond as my second choice because the comparison between the two fonts is interesting. An obvious difference that the two typefaces have is their boldness. Like Garamond, Century pays attention to thick and thin strokes within the letters, but it is not as dramatic as Garamond’s style. These less exaggerated features makes Century’s typeface bolder than Garamond’s. The boldness of this font helps create great legibility for reading purposes. Garamond’s attention to think and thin features make the font harder to read because the letters are not as bold. The spacing between letters is different between the two fonts. The letters are evenly spaced out in the Century typeface, which is another characteristic that helps its legibility. The letters in Garamond are pushed close together, obviously making it harder to read. Another reason why Century is more legible than Garamond is because the letters are sized evenly. For example, with Garamond’s features, compared to the other letters, the lower case “a” has a small bowl. By changing the size of features in the letters within the font, it decorates the font style to appear hand written.

Out of all five classic type faces the two I chose were Helvetica Neue and Garamond. Helvetica Neue was the typeface I mostly liked. This typeface is everywhere. On the gravitate online website I read that it used by Apple for there iOS mobile devices which I found very cool. We all have Apple products and text all day every day so Helvetica Neue is part of our every day life. Even in class when we watched that video about it, I think its awesome that we go around reading all these signs that are part of our everyday life and most of them are in the typeface Helvetica Neue. Garamond is a very different typeface compared to Helvetica Neue and I chose these two because of how much time is between the creation of these. Garamond was created in the 1600’s while Helvetica Neue was created in the 1900’s. I like that Garamond has the difference in thickness within the strokes. Reading Steve Bowden’s page I found it very interesting that Claude Garamond had created typefaces that were used for royally ordered book series. Also that almost 100 years after Garamond’s death the typeface became a popular one.

Baskerville and Garamond

Although there are elements that are pleasing to the eye in all five of the Classic Typefaces, I decided to focus on Baskerville and Garamond, the two oldest of the five typefaces.

Garamond is the older of the two typefaces, created in 1617 by Frenchman Claude Garamond. Due to primitive printing technology of the time, Garamond was created to be able to deal with the printing process. As a result, the aesthetics of the type are less pleasing to the eye than it’s eighteenth-century English counterpart, Baskerville. The letter forms for Garamond are more consistent, and appear to be based off of a slightly ovular circle, with less variation in the thickness of the strokes and an angled stress that runs through the letters, which are really only particularly noticeable in the  vowels a and e. The serifs on this typeface also seem to be heavier as a result of their size and thickness. The downward strokes evoke an older feeling that, couple with the heavy serifs give this typeface an almost clumsiness that seems to belong to the older textbooks I used to read in high school and grade school, which for me evokes a much more boring feeling that the more dynamic Baskerville.

Baskerville, on the other hand, is an English font published in 1757 by businessman John Baskerville. Just looking at the font in comparison to Garamond, it immediately has a more elegant and dramatic feel. Having a printing process that was much more effective and better resources allowed typefaces to change. For example, the serifs are not a heavy and are much more sculpted for stylistic purposes than for printing purposes. The angle of the stress is much closer to vertical, and more easily noticed by the eye, making it more appealing to the viewer. The heavy brackets in Garamond were virtually eradicated by Baskerville in his development of his typeface, giving it a much more streamlined feeling when reading it. Overall, the thinner type flows lighter and I find it easier to read. Especially in a book with hundreds of pages and very small type, I feel like this type would work better when it came to squishing lines of type on a page, because it would not be so much black with little letting between them. Overall, I find Baskerville more eye-catching and reader-friendly, and would be more inclined to turn to Baskerville first.

The five typefaces we had to look at were for the most part very similar and unless one looked hard enough would in fact say they were the same, but looking at them there were some key differences; like how one was sanserif and the ones that were serif had different types of serifs, also the differing thicknesses of the type, etc. I chose to look more closely at Baskerville and Helvetica, I much preferred Baskerville over Helvetica for a few reasons. Baskerville is a serif type and I just prefer serif typefaces to sanserif ones like Helvetica, they tend to be a bit more ornate with the different shapes and curves of the serifs unlike sanserif that just seem too plain. Baskerville is a thick and thin typeface meaning in some spots the type is thinner it resembles handwriting more so than Helvetica that is one uniform thickness. That’s not to say I don’t like Helvetica because I do like it in some contexts, every typeface has its use but compered to the other typefaces I just didn’t like it as much, one thing I did prefer about it though was that the “g” had a more modern look without so much swirling, that Baskerville’s had also the g was closed. Another thing was that there was more of a size distinction between the upper and lower case letters in Baskerville that I liked. Each Typeface is good and they each have a purpose that suits their styles.

To the untrained eye, typefaces look relatively the same. They may notice small differences, like whether or not a font has serifs or not. However, someone who works with type can pick up the differences and know the similarities. Out of the five Classic Typefaces, the one that I like the most is Century and the one that I like less is Helvetica Neue. Both are great typefaces and both have their uses and are widely used since the 1900s. I like Century for the curved brackets which add interest and the slab serifs at the bottom of the letters which help to create a visual line when reading. Century has a lighter weight than Helvetica, and it has the brackets that Helvetica does not have. Most text books use Century because it is easy to read. Helvetica has aspects that Century doesn’t have as well, so it is not all just once sided. For instance, Helvetica has a square dot over the letter ‘i’. Helvetica also has a double story ‘a’ that is not found with Century. Both typefaces played a major role in the development of type in the 20th Century.

The two typefaces I chose are Bodoni and Century. Bodoni is more appealing than Century is because of it’s severe contrast between thicks and thins in the letter forms. The Century font has a slight difference between thick and thins, but it isn’t as noticeable or distinguishable. The contrast of weights within the letters of the Bodoni font makes it more modern looking and interesting. Having more similar thicks and thins doesn’t require the viewer to be as engaged by the type. It is easier for viewers to glance over the words rather than pay attention to the words created by the font. If viewers are not engaged by the font, then it is not doing it’s job.
The other main difference between the Century and Bodoni fonts is in their brackets. The brackets on the Bodoni font are completely straight, while the brackets on the Century typeface are curved. Although it can be argued that the curved brackets on the Century typeface is more visually appealing than the straightness of Bodoni type, it can be counteracted by stating that they are over-compensating for the lack of interest of the font because of the similar thickness of the letters. I do appreciate the flourish that the curved brackets bring to the Century font, but it distracts the viewer. Although it is not over the top like some elegant typefaces, it is enough for the viewer to focus on the form of the letters rather than the message the type is conveying. The curved brackets do not appear to have any function other than to be aesthetically appealing. Having straight brackets on the Bodoni font allows viewers to focus on the message of the words rather than the letters themselves. There is nothing unnecessarily added to the type. Having the bare minimum, but not to the extent of Helvetica, makes the Bodoni font more appealing and functional than the Century font.