Bob
Have a question related to this hub?
Alice
Got something to say related to this hub?
Share it here.
 | |
| Category | Serif |
|---|---|
| Classification | Old-style |
| Designer(s) | John Downer |
| Foundry | Bitstream |
Iowan Old Style is a digital serif typeface designed by John Downer and released by Bitstream in 1991.[1]
Iowan Old Style is inspired by serif typefaces from Renaissance Italy, now called the “old-style” or Venetian model of typeface design, with influence from Downer’s work as hand-painter of signs.[2][3][4]
Compared to the historical models it is based on, Iowan has a higher x-height, meaning that the lower-case letters are taller and appear larger and wider, producing a design that is suitable for display and on-screen use.[5] It is used as a default font on the Apple Books application and is included as a system font on iOS and macOS.[6][7]
Downer has described the design "more Venetian than Aldine" and influenced by lettering.[4] It has diamond-dots (tittles) on the “i” and “j” similar to the Arts and Crafts-influenced Goudy Old Style.[1]
Iowan began as a design for ITC, but after the company dropped plans to release it, the font was bought up by Matthew Carter of Bitstream, who digitized and released it.[4] Bitstream later revisited the design, adding ornaments and titling capitals.[1] The character set includes small capitals and ligatures, as well as Cyrillic characters. Stephen Coles, an expert on digital fonts, describes its design as “hardworking.”[8]
macOS typefaces | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latin, Greek, Cyrillic |
| ||||||||
| Non-alphabetic | |||||||||
