Roman lettering

Roman lettering or Trajan lettering refers to the use by artists and signwriters of Roman square capitals in modern lettering, particularly in Britain.

Around the early twentieth century, British artists in the Arts and Crafts movement led by Edward Johnston came to see the proportions of Roman square capitals as an attractive, timeless form of letters, the ideal for artistic use. Artists who worked in this style included Johnston's pupils Eric Gill, Graily Hewitt, Percy Delf Smith and MacDonald Gill, as well as Reynolds Stone and many other professional signwriters and letter engravers. Roman capitals were used along with lower case, Arabic numerals, italics and calligraphy in a complementary style.

The style has been used for lettering where a feeling of timelessness was wanted, for example on First World War memorials and government buildings, but also on shopfronts, posters, maps, and other general uses. The popular name "Trajan" for this style of lettering came from the lettering on the base of the Trajan Column, copies of which were often used (in theory, at least) as models by lettering artists. Phil Baines commented that it became "Britain's standard style of official lettering".

The main source studying the history of Trajan lettering in Britain is Professor James Mosley's 1964 article Trajan Revived; and research by Dr. John Nash and biographers of individual artists.

Roman capitals were one of the main forms of lettering of the ancient world. During the Renaissance, there was considerable interest in Roman capitals, with typefaces based on them. However, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century types and lettering in the Didone or modern serif style tended to a style with sharp contrast in stroke width and capital letters of near equal width, the opposite of the Roman capital model where capitals had widely varying width. These proportions were copied into display typefaces and lettering of the time, like fat faces and sans-serifs.

The use of Roman capitals in lettering grew out of the Arts and Crafts movement, which promoted individual craftsmanship and traditional styles of art with respect for the past.

On 11 April 1898, the architect and historian William Lethaby offered Edward Johnston a job teaching illuminating and calligraphy at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, and Johnston began to teach classes on 21 September 1899. Lethaby was keen to increase students' interest in the aesthetic value of letters. Johnston rapidly built up a school of pupils very impressed with his work.

According to M. C. Oliver, Lethaby introduced the Trajan's Column inscription to Johnston and as professor of design at the Royal College of Art put casts of the inscription of Trajan's Column as a standard for students to follow. (At the time it was normal to use custom lettering for signs because of the inflexibility of printing and reproducing large fonts before the arrival of computer font technologies.)