But the emergence of PostScript fonts with scalable outlines in the mid-1980s seemed to seal the fate of optical sizes for good.Ī clear hierarchy helps readers navigate page or screen. The early days of computer typesetting briefly brought back size-specific fonts, since characters had to be constructed on bitmap grids with fixed resolutions. ![]() Phototypesetting machines made it possible to scale characters on a negative filmstrip simply by magnifying or reducing their size through a lens. The need to produce individual sizes of typefaces declined further with the advent of photocomposition in the mid-twentieth century. While Benton’s machine sped up production by automating the scaling of letterforms, the different sizes had identical, non-optimized character shapes. They adapted the character shapes of a typeface design to be as legible and structurally sound as possible at each point size they cut-skillfully, painstakingly, and one letter at a time.Īround the turn of the twentieth century, Linn Boyd Benton’s invention of the pantographic engraving machine for type design marked the first inkling of the change to come. Punchcutters, the unsung heroes of their time, played a crucial role in the production of type. Once hardened, individual letters were composed into text for printing. ![]() A matrix would then be set in a hand mold and filled with molten metal type alloy. These punches, typically cut in steel, were used to stamp glyphs into softer metal to form matrices. Joshua Darden’s sprawling Freight, from GarageFonts, comes in several optical sizes designed to preserve the typeface’s integrity across a wide range of applications.Īs Johannes Gutenberg’s movable-type printing system gained traction in fifteenth-century Europe, once a typeface was designed, a punchcutter would physically cut its characters in hard metal to produce punches. Historically, though, when type was cast in metal, a different font had to be created for every size. That may sound odd to contemporary ears digital typefaces are, of course, scalable. These are some of the names used to describe optical sizes-different cuts of a typeface family that have been designed to work within a certain range. ![]() Micro, Text, Deck, Display, Headline, Banner, Big.
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