In creating Sabon® Next, Jean François Porchez revived a revival. The original Sabon typeface, designed by Jan Tschichold was itself a contemporary revival of Claude Garamond’s 16th century types for the 1960s.
With Sabon, Tschichold not only created one of the best Garamond revivals to date, he also built what you might term on of the first “system fonts.” Commissioned by a German book printers’ guild, Sabon was intended for use on Linotype machines,
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Linotype’s Platinum Collection typefaces – Value Packs for the fonts now available
The Platinum Collection is an exclusive series of optimized classic typefaces in the Linotype Library. In close collaboration with world-famous type designers, Linotype has produced reworked, expanded typeface families that are both technologically and aesthetically up to date. These new typeface families have fine, harmonious weights; some have new italic weights and often come complete with Small Caps
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After training as a graphic designer, during which he focused on type design, Jean François Porchez (1964) worked as a type direcor at Dragon Rouge. By 1994, he had created the new typeface for Le Monde newspapers. Today he designs cusom typefaces for companies such as ratp (public transport in Paris), Peugeot, Cosa Crocieres, France Télécom, as well as disributing internationally his retail typefaces via his www.typofonderie.com website.
He was a jury member of the 3rd Linotype Type Design
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Jan Tschichold – born 2.4.1902 in Leipzig, Germany, died 11.8.1974 in Locarno, Switzerland – typographer, calligrapher, author, teacher.
1919–21: studies at the Akademie für Graphische Künste und Buchgewerbe in Leipzig. 1921–23: is one of Walter Tiemann’s master pupils and assistant to Hermann Delitsch.
1925: publication of Tschichold’s special issue of "Typographische Mitteilungen" magazine, entitled "elementare typographie". 1926–33: teaches typography and callygraphy at the
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Find further Font Features in our Font Feature Archive.
Typographic Tip of the Month from Linotype’s Type Director Akira Kobayashi!
June 2006: “Apostrophes and Quotation Marks”
Which glyph is correct: the inch, the acute, or the apostrophe? – This feature describes the poper use of the pesky punctuation mark that signifies omission and forms the possessive (and sometimes plurals).
Apostrophes
Prime symbol, used here to incorrectly create the
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Porchez has ensured that Sabon Next’s OpenType features meet every typographic desire. Below is an exhaustive list of what is included!
1.
Case forms: parentheses, brackets, and some punctuation marks change their vertical position when appearing with only capital letters
2.
Ligatures (fb, ffb, ff, fh, ffh, fi, ffi, fj, ffj, fk, fl, ffl, ft, and fft, plus long-s ligatures)
3.
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Claude Garamond
Claude Garamond (ca. 1480–1561) cut types for the Parisian scholar-printer Robert Estienne in the first part of the sixteenth century, basing his romans on the types cut by Francesco Griffo for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius in 1495. Garamond refined his Romans in later versions, adding his own concepts as he developed his skills as a punchcutter. After his death in 1561, the Garamond punches made their way to the printing office of Christoph Plantin in Antwerp, where they
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The design of Sabon Next™ by Jean François Porchez, a revival of a revival, was a double challenge: to try to discern Jan Tschichold´s own schema for the original Sabon, and to interpret the complexity of a design originally made in two versions for different typecasting systems.
The first was designed for use on Linotype and Monotype machines, and the second for Stempel hand composition. Because the Stempel version does not have the constraints necessary for types intended for machine composition, it seems closer to a pure interpretation of its Garamond ancestor.
Naturally Porchez based Sabon Next on this second version and also referred to original Garamond models, carefully improving the proportions of the existing digital
Sabon while matching its alignments.
The new family is large and versatile - with Roman and italic in 6 weights from regular to black. Most weights also have small caps, Old style Figures, alternates (swashes, ligatures, etc); and there is one ornament font with many lovely fleurons. The standard versions include revised lining figures that are intentionally designed to be a little smaller than capitals.