Times New Roman/ Albertus

Times New Roman

In 1929, Stanley Morison, already typographic advisor to Monotype, was also made typographic advisor to The Times of London newspaper. One of his first responsibilities of the latter position was to redesign the newspaper. Several existing typestyles were tried first; but Morison and The Times executive staff found them unsuitable for one reason or another. The decision was then made to create a new, custom, design.

The criteria was simple: the new design would have to appear larger than its predecessor, could take up no more space, should be slightly heavier and, ultimately, must be highly legible. Morison felt that basing the new design on Plantin would begin to satisfy much of the criteria. He provided Victor Lardent, a Monotype designer, with photographs of Plantin specimens and a list of instructions. The two worked together as art director and designer on the project for over two years.

Albertus

Berthold Wolpe began working on Albertus in 1932 at the encouragement of Stanley Morison. Morison saw an example of Wolpe’s inscriptual lettering and liked it so much that he commissioned the design of a typeface based on the design. Tilting caps were released first, in 1935. These were followed with roman upper and lowercase in 1938 and a light weight in 1940.

The original, inscriptual letters, were raised – not cut into the metal. The background was lowered and since the letters were cut from the outside in (not built from the inside out) there is a bold simplicity to the design and serifs were kept to a bare minimum.

Wolpe was born in Germany and was a student of Rudolf Koch. He began his career at the Klingspor foundry in Offenbach but moved to England in 1932. While Wolpe designed several typefaces, his main body of work was the many book jackets he designed for Faber & Faber publishers. Wolpe died in 1989 at the age of 84.

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• Allan Haley is Director of Words & Letters at Monotype Imaging. Here he is responsible for strategic planning and creative implementation of just about everything related to typeface designs. He is also responsible for editorial content for the company’s type libraries and Web sites.
• Prior to working for Monotype, Mr. Haley was Principal of Resolution, a consulting firm with expertise in fonts, font technology, type and typographic communication. He was also executive vice president of International Typeface Corporation.
• Mr. Haley is ex officio Chairman of the Board of the Society of Typographic Aficionados, and past President of the New York Type Directors Club. He is highly regarded as an educator and is a frequently requested speaker at national computer and design conferences.
• Mr. Haley is also a prolific writer, with five books on type and graphic communication and hundreds of articles for graphic design publications to his credit.