Bookman:
(click me)ITC Bookman:
2) Who designed it:
Bookman
- Designer: Alexander Phemister
- birth: 1829
- death: 1894
- Designer: Ed Benguiat
- Birth: October 27, 1927
- Death: still alive
- Bookman:1858
- ITC Bookman: 1975
Bookman: Old Style
ITC Bookman: Transitional
5) Information about the classification:
Old Style and Transitional classifications fall under the Serif and Slab Serif typefaces, respectively.
Old style type is generally considered "warm" or friendly, thanks to its origins in Renaissance humanism. The main characteristics of old style typefaces are low contrast with diagonal stress, and cove or "bracketed" serifs (serifs with a rounded join to the stem of the letter).
Transitional, a refinement of Old Style forms, this style forms the transition between Renaissance Old Style and Modern typefaces. With the change from the woodcut to copperplate engravings in the 17th Century, the lines of the letters became more fine and rich in contrast. The thick-to -thin relationships were exaggerated, and the brackets were lightened.
6) Fonts from these classifications:
Old Style: Bembo, Caslon, Garamond
Transitional: Baskerville, Caslon, Perpetua
7) what was happening in the world in the year the font was designed:
1858:
President James Buchanan asks Congress to admit Kansas as a slave state, even though it has voted against slavery. It does so, but Kansans reject the Lecompton constitution a third time, delaying statehood in order to prohibit slavery; Kansas does not become a state until 1861.
Upstart Republican Abraham Lincoln runs for the Senate in Illinois against incumbent Democrat Stephen Douglas, who supported the ill-fated Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Lincoln-Douglas debates are a forum in which the Republican anti-slavery position gets fleshed out and which also launch Lincoln into national political prominence.
Slaves are sold at extremely high prices thanks to the strong demand for cotton, and Southerners start to talk about re-opening the slave trade. James Hammond, Democratic senator from South Carolina, says, "You dare not make war upon cotton! No power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is king."
Texas socialist community La Reunion, founded according to the principles of Charles Fourier, is disbanded; its residents go off to live in Dallas instead. As the United States plunges toward civil war to finally resolve the contradiction of slavery, politics looks more important than utopian idealism.
A bomb intended to kill Napoleon III and his wife, Eugenie, kills 10 bystanders and wounds 150 but does not touch the ruling couple. Two Italian radicals are executed for the crime.
A 14-year-old asthmatic French schoolgirl, Bernadette, has 18 visions of a lady dressed in white with a blue sash. A chapel at Lourdes is erected to the vision, thought to be the Virgin Mary, and miracles are reputed to take place at the site.
Berlin doctor Rudolf Virchow isolates the cell, and calls it the basic unit of all life.
Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux start working on New York City's Central Park.
1975:
The last American troops leave Vietnam as North Vietnamese troops complete an invasion of South Vietnam and unite both countries under Communist rule. The final death toll of the war is roughly 1.3 million Vietnamese and more than 56,000 American lives.
China holds its Fourth National People's Congress to adopt a new national constitution and give the Central Committee Chairman, Mao Zedong, direct control of the military.
The Cambodian Khmer Rouge, led by Communist Pol Pot, defeats Lon Nol's government and institutes a reign of terror.
Microsoft is in business in Seattle, Washington. The computer software company is founded by Paul Allen, age 22, and Bill Gates, age 19 and a Harvard drop-out.
King Faisal of Saudi Arabia is assassinated by his nephew, who is shortly beheaded. Faisal's brother assumes power, continuing moderate policies in OPEC.
Discos reign over the dancing scene, as people do ``The Hustle'' and groove to The Bee Gees and Donna Summer.
36 nations agree to the Helsinki Accords, which outlines the policy for détente between East and West.
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is convicted of electoral fraud. Despite calls for her resignation, Gandhi stays in office, suppressing civil liberties yet instituting some agricultural reforms.
Civil war erupts in Lebanon.
Space is getting to be a friendly place; American and Soviet astronauts exchange neighborly visits when Apollo 18 and Soyuz 19 join in an orbital linkup.
Phemister: none
Benguiat:
- ITC Barcelona
- ITC Benguiat
- Benguiat Frisky
- ITC Benguiat Gothic
- ITC Bookman
- ITC Caslon No. 224
- ITC Edwardian Script
- ITC Garamond Handtooled
- ITC Modern No. 216
- ITC Panache
- ITC Tiffany
Born in Brooklyn, Benguiat was the son of a display director at Bloomingdale’s who made his pens, brushes, and drafting sets available to his son at an early age. Benguiat’s innate design talent was demonstrated when he graduated from high school and successfully forged a photostat of his birth certificate, which he used to join the armed forces during World War II. The color-blind recruit then cheated on a vision test by memorizing the correct answers in advance, and Benguiat was accepted into the Air Corps.
When he returned to civilian life, Benguiat followed his first professional dream: to be a musician. He earned a degree in music from Brooklyn College and began to work professionally as a big band drummer. “I played with Stan Kenton and Woody Herman,” he recalls, “on what was then called ‘Swing Street’ in New York.”
Even a good drummer could be out of work more often than not, however, so when his parents emphatically suggested that he become some other kind of artist, Benguiat enrolled in the Workshop School with the intention of becoming an illustrator. His first break as a lettering artist was basically a fluke. “I was working at a studio doing photo touch-up. The person responsible for lettering got sick and the studio needed a lettering job done,” he recalls. “I said I could do it. I figured I could do anything, until somebody told me different. I did the job, and I’ve been drawing letters ever since.”
Ed Benguiat loves to draw letters. When he’s not creating a new typeface, he can usually be found working on a piece of hand-lettering or a logo design for one of his hundreds of clients. The addiction is pervasive: in restaurants he sketches new alphabets on napkins, in business meetings he doodles in Spencerian cursive, and his greeting cards are always hand-lettered works of art.
Benguiat (pronounced BEN-gat) has drawn more than six hundred typefaces, possibly more than any other type designer. His work includes faces for International Typeface Corporation, PhotoLettering Inc., and for corporate clients such as AT&T and The New York Times. Some of his designs are revivals of old metal faces; these include ITC Souvenir and ITC Bookman Others, like ITC Panache, are completely original. And long before sophisticated type manipulation software was available, Benguiat was creating new typefaces by “sampling” features of existing designs. ITC Tiffany and ITC Barcelona are both examples of his ability to take design traits from existing typefaces and meld them into a new design.
10) quote by designer:
“To me designing has never been a job or profession. It’s a way of life, like a priest or rabbi.”
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