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Janson
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Janson
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Janson
CategorySerif
ClassificationOld-style
DesignersMiklós Tótfalusi Kis
Chauncey H. Griffith
FoundryLinotype
Date created1937
Design based onNicholas Kis' Roman of 1685[citation needed]

Janson is the name given to a set of old-style serif typefaces from the Dutch Baroque period, and modern revivals from the twentieth century.[1][2][3] Janson is a crisp, relatively high-contrast serif design, most popular for body text.

Janson is based on surviving matrices from Leipzig that were named for Anton Janson (1620–1687), a Leipzig-based printer and punch-cutter from the Netherlands who was believed to have created them. In 1954 Harry Carter and George Buday published an essay asserting that the designer of the Janson typeface was in fact a Hungarian-Transylvanian schoolmaster and punchcutter, Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis (1650–1702).[4][5]

Historical background

[edit]
Roman types from the Ehrhardt specimen. The larger sizes are more condensed than the smaller ones on which Ehrhardt and Janson are based.
Italic types from the Ehrhardt specimen

Miklós Kis, a Transylvanian Protestant pastor and schoolmaster, became deeply interested in printing after being sent to Amsterdam to help print a Hungarian Protestant translation of the Bible.[6][7] This was a period of considerable prosperity for the Netherlands and a time when its styles of printing were very influential across Europe, making it a centre for the creation of new typefaces.[5][8][9] He developed a second career as a punchcutter, an engraver of the punches used as a master for stamping matrices for casting metal type, selling his work to printers in the Netherlands and abroad. The style he worked in was based on French serif typefaces of the previous century, but with boosted x-height and higher stroke contrast, creating a higher-contrast, sharper effect.[10] It was later called the "Dutch taste" (goût hollandois), a term originating from the writings of Pierre Simon Fournier in the next century.[11] Kis is considered to have been one of the most talented engravers active during this period, and perhaps uniquely wrote about his work in later life, allowing greater insight into his work than other earlier engravers.[5] Kis also cut typefaces for other languages including Greek and Hebrew typefaces.

Kis returned to Transylvania around 1689 and may have left matrices (the moulds used to cast type) in Leipzig on his way home.[12][5][a] The Ehrhardt type foundry of Leipzig released a surviving specimen sheet of them around 1720, leading to the attribution to Janson.[13][14]

Kis's surviving matrices were first acquired by Stempel, and are now held in the collection of the Druckmuseum (Museum of Printing), Darmstadt.[15][16][17] Kis's identity as the maker of the typefaces was rediscovered in the 1950s by comparison with type from Hungarian archive sources (including his autobiography) on which his name was identified.[18][19][20] Due to their survival, the Janson typefaces became popular with fine printers of the late Arts and Crafts period such as Updike, who could print books from them using hand-set type cast from surviving original matrices. In his book Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Uses, Updike commented that "although heavy, they retain considerable vivacity of line and have great capabilities when used with taste."[14]

Despite its 17th-century origins, Janson is used in a wide variety of modern-day text applications. As of the magazine's 2011 redesign, Architectural Digest uses Janson for body text in all of its articles; so does Philosophy Now. It has also been used for the Journal of the British Printing Historical Society.[21]

Revivals

[edit]
A book printed by Kis in Kolozsvár (modern name Cluj-Napoca) in 1697, after his return to Transylvania. It defends his somewhat contentious choices of editing and orthography in his Hungarian printing.

The Janson type was popular with twentieth-century typographers including Updike and Stanley Morison, who admired its design as something different to the Didone and neo-medieval types dominant in the nineteenth century, and several revivals were made in the twentieth century for the hot metal typesetting systems of the period.[22][2]

A revival of the face was designed in 1937 by Chauncey H. Griffith of the Mergenthaler Linotype foundry. The revival was taken from the original matrices, held since 1919 by the Stempel Type Foundry, which were Mergenthaler's exclusive agent in Europe. Griffith was a great admirer of the Janson designs, writing to Carl Rollins of Yale University Press that "I am so anxious to have the Linotype face worthy of its name. If I cannot succeed in satisfying myself that our interpretation of Janson will be worthy of the honored name it bears, we shall not hesitate a moment to scrap the whole work and forget it."[23]

The most common digital version, Janson Text, comes from a metal version produced by Hermann Zapf in the 1950s at Stempel. This was based on Kis' original matrices.[24] Digitisations are available from Linotype, Adobe, Bitstream (adding Cyrillic glyphs), URW++ (adding an additional light and black weights) and others. A separate digital version is Elsner+Flake's Kis Antiqua Now. Described by Paul Shaw as the best digital version, it was designed by Hildegard Korger and Erhard Kaiser and originates from Korger's revival for the East German foundry VEB Typoart.[25][1][26]

A separate common revival of the Janson types is Ehrhardt, created by Monotype in the 1930s.[27] Somewhat more condensed than most Janson revivals, giving it a crisp, vertical appearance, it is a popular book typeface, particularly often used in the UK.[28] Besides a number of revivals specifically of Ehrhardt (described in that article), two more by Linotype and Berthold have been sold under the name of Kis.[29][30]

Random House's Modern Library Classics collection has some of its books printed in a digitized version of Janson typeface.

References

[edit]
[edit]
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Janson

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
Janson is the name given to a set of old-style typefaces designed during the Dutch period and revived in the twentieth century. The original punches were cut around 1685 by the Hungarian punchcutter Miklós Tótfalusi Kis while working in , but the typeface was long misattributed to Anton Janson, a Dutch typefounder active in , because his name appeared on later specimen sheets using matrices from Kis's design. Characterized by relatively high stroke contrast, bracketed serifs, and a moderate , Janson is a crisp popular for body text in and periodicals. Twentieth-century revivals include Monotype's Ehrhardt (1938), Linotype's version supervised by Chauncey H. Griffith (ca. 1930s), and Hermann Zapf's adaptations for Stempel and Linotype in the 1950s, with digital versions released by , Linotype, and others. It has influenced modern book typography and appears in publications such as Architectural Digest and Random House's Classics.

Origins and History

Development by Miklós Kis

Miklós Kis (1650–1702), a Hungarian-Transylvanian and schoolmaster, played a pivotal role in the development of the original during the . Born in Misztótfalu, Kis initially worked as an educator in , where he contributed to the printing of schoolbooks and religious texts amid the region's efforts to promote Protestant education under Habsburg pressures. In 1680, seeking to advance Transylvanian printing capabilities, he traveled to —a thriving hub of Baroque-era —and apprenticed under the renowned punchcutter Dirk Voskens, mastering the craft of cutting punches and matrices for Latin, Greek, and Hebrew types. Around 1685, while based in , Kis designed and cut the punches for the original roman and italic variants of what would later become known as Janson, adapting influences from earlier French old-style serifs, such as those by Christoffel van Dijck, to suit the "Dutch taste." This adaptation featured a higher for improved legibility in body text, increased stroke contrast to enhance , and sharper, more bracketed serifs that contributed to a robust yet refined appearance suited to dense . These characteristics reflected the Dutch Baroque emphasis on clarity and durability in book production, distinguishing Kis's work from more delicate French models while prioritizing readability for extended reading. Kis produced the punches and matrices in his Amsterdam workshop, but financial difficulties prompted his return to Transylvania around 1689, during which he left some matrices behind in . These were subsequently acquired by the Ehrhardt foundry through local typefounding operations, which cast and disseminated the type. The first known specimen of Kis's type was printed by the Ehrhardt foundry circa 1720, marking its early integration into German printing traditions and leading to its initial attribution to the Dutch punchcutter Anton Janson—a misidentification corrected through scholarly by Harry Carter and George Buday.

Misattribution to Anton Janson

The typeface now known as was misattributed to the Dutch typefounder Anton Janson (1620–1687), whose foundry in acquired matrices created by Miklós Kis following Kis's departure from the city around 1689. Janson had died two years prior in 1687, but his foundry's operations continued under his name, and subsequent specimens were signed accordingly, fostering the long-standing association between the punchcutter and the designs. Following Janson's death in 1687, the matrices passed through foundries before reaching the Ehrhardt foundry in the early , where they were actively used for type casting and documented in specimens, thereby reinforcing the erroneous attribution across generations of printers and typefounders. This misattribution endured for more than 250 years until 1957, when typographic historians Harry Carter and George Buday published a seminal essay in Gutenberg Jahrbuch, employing analysis of distinctive punchcutter marks—such as unique devices on letters like the 'M' and 'g'—to conclusively demonstrate Miklós Kis's authorship based on his documented work in the 1680s. The error significantly influenced nomenclature in the , as revivals by foundries like Stempel in adopted the "Janson" designation for marketing continuity, even after the correction gained scholarly acceptance, thereby embedding the name in modern digital and photocomposition versions despite the clarified origins. Kis's original matrices, preserved through these foundry transitions, are presently held in the collection of the Druckmuseum (Department of Type Casting, Typesetting, and Printing Processes) at the Hessisches Landesmuseum in .

Design Features

Classification as Old-Style Serif

Janson is classified as an old-style serif typeface, a category originating in the late 15th to 17th centuries and marked by moderate stroke contrast, bracketed serifs that curve gently into the stems, and proportions that balance calligraphic fluidity with printing precision. These features align it with Garalde designs, which refined earlier Humanist models by introducing sharper definitions in serifs and horizontal stress in elements like the lowercase e. The typeface's structure reflects influences from 17th-century Dutch punchcutters, emphasizing durability and legibility for metal type. Rooted in the Dutch Baroque era, Janson emerged during a period of typographic innovation tied to the Dutch Golden Age's printing boom, when publishers like the Elzevirs produced compact, affordable editions of classical texts using robust Dutch faces. It bridges transitional styles by incorporating Humanist influences—such as diagonal axis tilt in curved letters—from 16th-century Italian designs, yet incorporates sharper contrasts emblematic of the "Dutch taste," a style noted for its refined, angular elegance over softer Venetian forms. This positions Janson within old-style serifs as more condensed and crisp than Venetian examples like , which favor broader, more rounded proportions, while avoiding the heightened mechanical uniformity and increased contrast of later transitionals like . Its evolution traces from 16th-century Dutch types, including those cut by Christoffel van Dijck, which emphasized even spacing and firm serifs to support the era's surge in scholarly publishing. Janson's even color, moderate , and at small sizes make it particularly suited for body text, as intended in the original punches, ensuring clarity in dense compositions without visual fatigue.

Key Letterform Characteristics

The Janson typeface is distinguished by its bracketed serifs, which are slightly tapered on ascenders and , creating a subtle flaring effect that imparts while maintaining restraint and avoiding ornate excess. These serifs contribute to the typeface's refined old-style aesthetic, with better-defined shapes that enhance in extended text settings. In terms of bowl and counter shapes, Janson employs rounded bowls on letters such as 'b', 'd', 'p', and 'q', paired with open counters to promote superior , particularly in body text. The lowercase 'a' adopts a traditional double-story form featuring a straight tail, aligning with the typeface's emphasis on clear, functional forms derived from 17th-century techniques. The stems and axis in Janson display a slightly slanted stress along vertical strokes, accompanied by moderate thickness variation between strong main strokes and fine hairlines, influenced by copper artistry. This design features a diagonal axis in curved letters, consistent with earlier Humanist influences but refined for the Dutch taste, and supports consistent visual flow. In the italic variant, the style draws from traditions but remains restrained, incorporating minimal elements for subtlety; it also features a higher relative to the capitals, fostering balanced line composition and harmonious integration with roman forms. Overall, Janson's proportions are compact, enabling economical use of in , while its even spacing yields a crisp, uniform appearance that underscores its suitability for high-quality book work. These traits, rooted in the original designs, preserve small irregularities from hand-cut punches, adding character without compromising clarity.

Modern Revivals

Linotype and Monotype Adaptations

In 1937, Mergenthaler Linotype released a revival of the Janson , designed under the direction of Chauncey H. Griffith and based on surviving matrices acquired by the D. Stempel AG from the original punches cut by Miklós Kis in the late . This adaptation preserved the original's proportions closely, making it suitable for book composition while adapting it for the Linotype hot-metal system. The Monotype Corporation followed with its Ehrhardt revival in 1938, developed by the Monotype drawing office and inspired by a specimen from the Ehrhardt in , which also traces to Kis's designs. More condensed than the Linotype version, Ehrhardt was optimized for space efficiency in British newspapers and books, retaining Janson's characteristic bracketed serifs and even color but with narrower letter widths and added weights including bold for greater versatility in machine composition. These revivals emerged during the 1930s shift from hand-composition to mechanized hot-metal , prioritizing durable matrices and high under the demands of Linotype slugs and Monotype machines to support expanding print demands in . The Linotype Janson targeted American markets, while Ehrhardt served the , with both appearing in specimens for book by the , demonstrating their adoption in professional .

Digital Versions and Variants

The primary digital revival of Janson emerged in the mid-1980s through Linotype's Janson Text, which digitized Hermann Zapf's 1950s metal version originally developed for Stempel and refined for with enhanced italics and additional ligatures. Directed by Horst Heiderhoff in consultation with and Zapf, this adaptation was expanded in 1983 into a family featuring regular, bold, italic, and bold italic weights, optimized for and early with improved legibility and stroke contrast variation. Subsequent digital versions from other foundries built on these foundations, incorporating extended character sets for multilingual use and advanced typographic features. released Janson in the early 1990s, offering nine styles including light, medium, bold, and corresponding italics, with comprehensive pairs and support for Central European languages to facilitate broader software integration. Elsner+Flake's Kis Antiqua Now, released in 2009 and revised with designer Erhard Kaiser, provides a faithful rendering of the original Kis matrices in four weights (headline and book variants), achieving full compliance, small caps, old-style figures, and features such as discretionary ligatures for enhanced compatibility. Bitstream contributed a digital iteration known as Kis, extending the Linotype Janson design with Cyrillic support added in 2001 by Vladimir Yefimov, emphasizing robust forms suitable for text setting in diverse scripts. The Font Bureau's Kis FB (2007), designed by David Berlow, further modernized the family with four weights and refined spacing for digital screens, prioritizing conceptual fidelity to Kis's 17th-century old-style characteristics over exhaustive historical replication. More recent efforts include RMU's Kis Antiqua Pro (2018) by Ralph M. Unger, a revival of earlier Typoart versions with proportional lining figures and tabular variants for precise tabular data handling in contemporary applications. These adaptations collectively ensure Janson's enduring utility in digital environments, focusing on scalability, readability, and feature-rich implementations without altering core letterforms.

Applications and Influence

Notable Publications and Uses

Janson has found significant application in book publishing, where its balanced proportions and readability make it ideal for body text in literary works. , a major publisher, has employed digitized versions of Janson in various titles, including Gary Shteyngart's Little Failure (2014), to support extended reading in reprints and modern editions. This usage extends to classics, leveraging the typeface's high contrast for clear, fatigue-free prose in series like the editions from the 1990s and 2000s. In magazine design, Janson serves as a neutral, versatile choice for article body text. Following its 2011 redesign, Architectural Digest adopted Janson to enhance legibility across features on and , maintaining a professional tone suitable for high-end editorial content. Similarly, Philosophy Now utilizes Janson for philosophical essays, valuing its understated elegance that avoids distracting from complex ideas. For academic and historical contexts, the —a close adaptation of 17th-century Dutch types from the same punchcutting traditions as those underlying Janson—appears in scholarly publications focused on . Beyond print, Janson proves suitable for advertising and marketing body copy, offering a timeless style that conveys reliability without overpowering visuals. In digital realms, modern versions support web through webfont licensing, enabling its use in online editorial content for sustained readability on screens. The typeface's practical impact spans decades, evolving from mid-20th-century book printing—such as the Merrymount Press's 1934 bibliography Notes on the Merrymount Press—to contemporary digital layouts as of 2025. Its enduring versatility in long-form content stems from features like subtle high contrast, which aids eye flow without causing visual strain. Janson, as an old-style serif typeface, exhibits a crisper and more robust character compared to the softer, more calligraphic , with noticeably higher stroke contrast and a subtle vertical stress that enhances its suitability for modern printing applications. While both fall under the Garalde with refined proportions and moderate contrast between thick and thin strokes, Janson's forms are slightly heavier and denser, contributing to a livelier presence on the page without the earthy fluidity of 's humanist roots. In relation to Bembo, another Venetian-inspired old-style , Janson's Dutch origins impart narrower proportions and sharper, more defined serifs, allowing for tighter text settings in dense compositions where Bembo's wider letterspacing and rounded forms promote a more open, elegant flow. Both share the moderate contrast and bracketed serifs typical of Garalde designs, but Janson's verticality and economy make it particularly effective for body text in scholarly or technical works, contrasting Bembo's preference for literary and display contexts. Ehrhardt, a close variant derived from the same 17th-century Dutch punchcutting traditions as Janson (often attributed to Miklós Kis), adopts a more condensed structure optimized for economical , particularly in newsprint and periodicals, while forgoing Janson's fuller, more generous curves. This adaptation results in a crisper, upright appearance in larger sizes, but Ehrhardt lacks the subtle irregularities and charm of Janson's original matrices, prioritizing space efficiency over expressiveness. Janson served as a precursor to various 18th-century Dutch typefaces, influencing designs that emphasized practicality and readability in the post-Baroque era, and it stands in contrast to transitional serifs like Times New Roman through its less uniform stroke modulation and diagonal stress, retaining old-style warmth amid evolving printing demands. Overall, Janson's distinctive balance of Baroque elegance—evident in its refined serifs and horizontal crossbar on the lowercase "e"—and functional density positions it as a bridge between historical revivalism and modernist utility, distinguishing it from both purely ornamental predecessors and more rigid contemporaries.

References

  1. https://www.myfonts.com/collections/janson-text-font-linotype/
  2. https://luc.devroye.org/fonts-70984.html
  3. https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/4185/janson-and-kis
  4. https://www.youworkforthem.com/blog/2016/03/14/janson-text-classic-serif-font-design-17th-century-origins/
  5. https://www.monotype.com/fonts/ehrhardt
  6. https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/1156/janson-text
  7. https://typejournal.ru/en/articles/Kis-Cyrillic-Typeface
  8. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Janson
  9. https://www.gorselsanatlaregitimi.com/wp-content/uploads/AVA-fundamentals-Gavin-Ambrose-Paul-Harris-The-fundamentals-of-typography-AVA-Publishing-2011.pdf
  10. https://catalogus.boekman.nl/pub/P15-0158.pdf
  11. https://www.type-together.com/crediting-in-type-design
  12. https://www.gutenberg-gesellschaft.de/publikationen/gutenberg-jahrbuch/gutenberg-jahrbuch-1957
  13. https://www.hlmd.de/de/museum/aussenstellen/abteilung-schriftguss-satz-und-druckverfahren.html
  14. https://www.monotype.com/resources/guide-type-styles
  15. https://www.linotype.com/5609767/janson-text-family.html
  16. https://www.c82.net/printing-types/chapters/15
  17. https://www.bergsland.org/2012/09/book-production/typography/dutch-old-style-janson/
  18. https://www.linotype.com/156093/monotype-janson-family.html
  19. https://luc.devroye.org/fonts-104413.html
  20. https://www.myfonts.com/collections/janson-text-font-linotype
  21. https://books.google.com/books/about/Anatomy_of_a_Typeface.html?id=8hbc1RJwBIYC
  22. https://www.identifont.com/show?JE
  23. https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/4925/ehrhardt
  24. https://pampatype.com/blog/type-design-revivalism
  25. https://www.quadibloc.com/other/tfacint.htm
  26. https://www.myfonts.com/collections/janson-font-urw/
  27. https://www.myfonts.com/collections/kis-antiqua-now-tb-pro-font-elsner-flake/
  28. https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/88484/kis-antiqua
  29. https://luc.devroye.org/kis.html
  30. https://fontsinuse.com/tags/882/random-house
  31. https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%257CA491612732&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=01929275&p=AONE&sw=w
  32. https://uwmspeccoll.tumblr.com/post/654091869182214144/typography-tuesday-janson-janson-is-an-old-style
  33. https://paperbackdesign.com/typefaces/ehrhardt/
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