Times New Roman
Item No. 2
“If this or any font were to disappear completely, the cost would be the loss of a look. A loss of a feeling when we read. A loss of a time, obviously.”Twenty-six letters. Four hundred and forty-one glyphs. The capital ‘T’ so stately, so upright. The lowercase ‘t’ a bit more cheeky, with that slightly upright curve at the top of the letter and that little salute—the spur’s flip at the bottom. Both letters—in fact every letter in the title of our catalog—are a part of an old-style serif monotype font family. You know the family. The bold, solid font with that familiar ridge and curvature that underpins our eyes as they move from letter to letter, word to word, into a sentence and then a story. That familiar solid go to typeface is what we’re getting at—TIMES NEW ROMAN. (We use it for our pull out quotes and our title). An artistic advisor named Victor Lardent designed each line in each letter. Lardent and Stanley Morison designed the font for the British newspaper The Times. They were commissioned to produce a replacement font (at the time of their design). Lardent, the lettering artist, from the “advertising department” designed an “economical and legible” font—more economic and legible than previous fonts it was thought to be. Times New Roman met the public on October 3, 1932, and from there, the uptick in use was slow. More ink was required, apparently–and higher quality paper, too, to print with Times New Roman. But that changed, and later on, (as in the time of our lives) the font appeared everywhere it seemed. A basic. A steady in our font selections and in our newspaper reads. While you can technically still get it, some say that it is disappearing from favorability. Microsoft Office, switched to “Calibri” in order to “prioritize a more contemporary look?”—and more recently “Aptos.” This means something so steady as the shape of the letters we read can slowly fade away from our font scales and from before our eyes, really. As one font replaces a vintage former font and then one day becomes vintage itself.
As for Times New Roman, we’ve seen those upright letters well, almost everywhere—for a long time. As one of the most popular typefaces in the world—it's been an invisible—visible—steady on our pages and in our lives. So the cost? Wellllll…..it seems the cost is that steady loop and a swirl formerly visible to our eyes. It's a little impossible to describe. Were Times New Roman to slip completely out of our sight...Gone would be the narrow-tracking ascends that ‘rise-above’ the cap height. And details, details, details like the "sharp brackets, finials, and links” of this serif font that was once laced together in drawings probably, by Mr. Lardent.
Other specifications:
Imagine the future archivist that might preserve a document you created with Times New Roman from their future desk one day. Will they be interested in what you had to say?