Items11The creator’s order
  1. 1The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times nameplate The Gothic, or blackletter, name on the front page goes back to founder Henry Jarvis Raymond, and it has been refined rather than replaced ever since. Its best-known revision took effect in February 1967, when promotion art director Lou Silverstein redrew it on tracing…0
  2. 2Cheltenham (typeface)Cheltenham (typeface)Cheltenham was drawn in the 1890s by the architect Bertram Goodhue for Ingalls Kimball's Cheltenham Press, and it was built on a theory of reading. Goodhue lengthened the ascenders and shortened the descenders, betting that the top half of a line does most of the work when the eye recognizes words.…0
  3. 3Legibility GroupLegibility GroupIonic No. 5, Linotype, 1925 The first of Linotype's Legibility Group, developed in-house under Chauncey H. Griffith for newspaper text set on hot metal machines. It avoided fine lines and serifs that would break down in stereotyping, and small openings that would fill with ink, so it stayed…0
  4. 4Times New RomanTimes New RomanThe most famous newspaper typeface began as a complaint. Stanley Morison, artistic adviser to the British branch of Monotype, criticized the look of The Times and was invited to do something about it; the result made its debut in the paper on October 3, 1932. Morison proposed Monotype's older…0
  5. 5Gerard UngerGerard UngerBorn Jan 22, 1942Swift, Gerard Unger, 1985 The Dutch designer Gerard Unger first drew Swift in the early 1980s for Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell, the German typesetting company whose clients around the world included many newspapers. Its giant serifs and pronounced shapes were meant to make it close to indestructible in…0
  6. 6The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian masthead by David Hillman, 1988 For the paper's February 1988 redesign, Pentagram partner David Hillman set The in Garamond italic and Guardian in Helvetica bold: a light, slanted serif leaning against a heavy sans, which looked startlingly modern on a British broadsheet. Readers did…0
  7. 7Le MondeLe MondeLe Monde Journal by Jean François Porchez, 1994 This one started unsolicited. In April 1994 Porchez read an article by Le Monde's new editor-in-chief, Jean-Marie Colombani, announcing a redesign, and decided the paper needed a new typeface. In July he wrote to propose one: a drastic reworking of…0
  8. 8Retina (typeface)Retina (typeface)The Wall Street Journal's stock tables were the problem: thousands of tiny figures printed on newsprint. Tobias Frere-Jones answered with Retina, created in 2000 in a MicroPlus size for composing tiny yet readable listings. Its MicroPlus weights have deep-cut notches that absorb ink in print, and…0
  9. 9Guardian EgyptianGuardian EgyptianWhen The Guardian became the first British title to adopt the smaller European Berliner page in September 2005, creative director Mark Porter commissioned Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz to draw a whole new family for it. Guardian Egyptian's biggest influence was the slab serif Egyptians cast by…0
  10. 10The TimesThe TimesTimes Modern, 2006 The paper that gave the world Times New Roman eventually decided its headlines needed something sharper. For a 2006 redesign, a typeface project led by deputy editor Ben Preston with Neville Brody's Research Studios produced Times Modern, with Brody's colleague Luke Prowse also…0