Century Roman Theodore Low De Vinne, the printer of
Century Magazine, wanted a more legible typeface for the magazine. He commissioned his friend
Linn Boyd Benton from the newly formed
American Type Founders to devise such a face. Over the course of the nineteenth century, largely because of the influence of
Bodoni, common printing fonts had become thin, making a weak impression on the page. De Vinne and fellow printer
William Morris decried this "growing effeminacy" and called for a reversion to sturdier faces. This was made only in foundry type and later an accompanying face of normal width was produced by L.B. Benton, called variously
Century Broad Face or
Century No. 2. Despite being the original member of the Century family, it is not popular compared to the later members of the family with more normal proportions.
Century With the merging of twenty-three foundries into
American Type Founders in 1892, Linn Boyd Benton's son,
Morris Fuller Benton, was given the task of consolidating and purging the faces of these manufacturers into a coherent selection. Following this, he was given the task of adapting
Century No. 2 to meet the
Typographical Union standards of the time. Records now in the
Smithsonian show that M.F. Benton not only re-designed his father's face, but did so with reference to
#16 Roman of the
Bruce Type Foundry which A.T.F. had recently acquired. (And which, probably not coincidentally, had been introduced in the Bruce Foundry catalog of 1877 which had been printed by De Vinne.) Following the successful introduction of this type, M.F. Benton embarked upon the creation of the first planned type family, and it is this conception of "type families" that is probably Benton's single greatest achievement. The faces were issued over a period of ten years, all of which were designed by Benton and issued by A.T.F.: •
Century Expanded –
Autologic,
Berthold,
Dymo,
Harris,
Mergenthaler,
Monotype,
Varityper,
Linotype,
Bitstream •
Century X –
Alphatype •
Century Light –
Compugraphic •
Censtar Expanded –
Star/Photon •
Cambridge Expanded –
Graphic Systems Inc. •
Digi-Antiqua –
Hell AG •
ITC Century -
ITC: a less faithful version with increased
x-height, but extremely popular, has also been digitised. A
Century typeface was also available for the
IBM Selectric Composer.
Digital variants A digital version named
Benton Modern Text was first prepared by
Font Bureau for the
Boston Globe and the
Detroit Free Press. It was designed by
Tobias Frere-Jones and is based on
Century Expanded, but the accompanying italic and bold are based upon Century Schoolbook and were designed by
Richard Lipton and
Christian Schwartz. Benton Modern was released in two optical sizes: text for general use and display for large text sizes. Font Bureau had already digitised as a separate project Century Bold Condensed on its own, intending it particularly for newspaper headlines.
Century Oldstyle Century Oldstyle was released at a time when heavier faces with bracketed serifs were returning to vogue. The faces, all designed by Benton, were issued by A.T.F. over a period of six years. Despite the name it is not purely an old-style serif font (the type of metal type used before around 1750), but retains many more modern characteristics such as its curling capital Q. •
Century Oldstyle + italic + bold (1909) •
Century Oldstyle Bold Italic (1910) •
Century Oldstyle Bold Condensed (1915)
Hot metal copies Century Oldstyle was not as popular as its predecessor, but the roman and italic were copied by
Linotype,
Intertype, and
Monotype.
Century Schoolbook Monospace Century Schoolbook Century Schoolbook is a
transitional serif typeface designed by
Morris Fuller Benton in 1919 for the
American Type Founders (ATF) at the request of
Ginn & Co., a textbook publisher, which wanted an especially easy-to-read face for textbooks.
Century Schoolbook has elements similar to the
Didone classification.
Century Schoolbook is based on the earlier
Century Roman.
Century Schoolbook is familiar to many in North America as being the typeface with which many first learned to read. Morris Fuller Benton utilized research done by
Clark University that showed young readers more quickly identified letterforms with contrasting weight, but with the lighter strokes maintaining presence. Tests also showed the importance of maintaining counter-form (the white space around the black letterform) in recognizing the face at smaller sizes. There are also versions of
New Century Schoolbook by
URW++,
DTP Types,
Bitstream,
Elsner+Flake and others. A very limited set of styles digitised by
URW++ has been released as open-source software as part of the
Ghostscript project in type 1 format. TeX Gyre Schola is an adaptation of the URW release by a Polish group. Including a Cyrillic version and small caps, it is perhaps the most complete open-source digitisation of the Century family. Confusingly, the Monotype version offered with Microsoft products is also called just 'Century', perhaps for backwards compatibility reasons from the period when file names had to be short. Modern Microsoft products include both this 'Century' (in roman style only but with Cyrillic characters) and the same design as 'Century Schoolbook', only the latter including the whole family with bold and italics.
Digital variants Grad is a variant by Phil Martin (digitized by
Mark Simonson) based on the original ATF Century Schoolbook. It is an extensive digitisation with text figures and small caps, also adding unusual features such as asymmetric serifs.
Century Supra was designed by
Matthew Butterick to be narrower and darker and includes a separate set of caps fonts. Presumably, it was designed with the intent to be used in legal pleadings, as Matthew is an attorney practicing in California; he was a typographic designer before law school.
Century Schoolbook Infant This is a single-story version of the typeface that is used to help children learn to read. It is very rare, but it can be found in the
Spot books by
Eric Hill.
Cyrillic adaptations The Century Schoolbook typeface was also adapted by Soviet typographies. The first Cyrillic adaptation, named
Pioner (Russian for "pioneer"), was designed in 1939, and later in 1961 the second adaptation was made in the scientific research institute (NII) "Poligrafmash". The latter version acquired the name ''Shkol'naya'' (Russian for "of school") and since then it has been the standard and most widely used typeface for children publications and for school textbooks in the Soviet Union and later in Russia.
Century Nova Century Nova + Italic (1964) was designed by Charles E. Hughes with the stipulation from A.T.F. that it must be equally suited for both letterpress (hot type) and offset (cold type) reproduction. The thin lines are substantial and the lower-case letters have a larger x-height, and (perhaps ironically) it returns to the condensed nature of the original
Century Roman. This was the second-to-last face cut by A.T.F. Scangraphic has released a digitisation. ==Related digital revivals==