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‘Arrighi was here’ button by George Abrams

Any current drawing of the type work of Nicholas Jenson (1420-80) that includes an Italic is doing a little fudging. Since (like Trajan and lowercase), Italic wasn’t quite around yet when Jenson was making type.

Typically the work of Ludovico Arrighi (1475–1527) is adapted as the companion font to Jenson – as the Italic.

Monotype did this with its Jenson-influenced Centaur – and Adobe Jenson sports an Arrighi-influenced italic.

mr. abrams
Back in 1994, I got to see the incredible hand-drawn, Jenson-influenced Venetian types of George Abrams. He worked large, 2 or 3 foot tall letters drawn in pencil, no drafting instruments. He called himself, ‘Mr. Analog.’

His influence is one of the reasons I believe in hand skills in my typography classes. It’s the only way to really learn about type.

At the time, his Jenson-inspired types were only available to private presses. They were digitized by current TDC president, Charles Nix.

George Abrams was very selective about who used his types. At one point he refused to license his fonts to a corporation I worked for.

That also impressed me.

We exchanged holiday cards over the years, his were always fantastic. Elegant and graceful are words I think of regarding his art. His types, extensions of his personality.

legacy
Mr. Abrams passed away in 2001.

His types live on as the Abrams Legacy Collection, purchasable thru MyFonts. Available are his Venetians (with Arrighi italics, of course) and his Garamond interpretation, Augereau, named for Claude Garamond’s mentor Antone Augereau. Would love to see, someday, a digital version of his often rumored to exist Caslon.

Today, we use Abrams Augereau for the logotype for the Art New Media program at American River College – one of the schools where I teach.

Because, frankly, no other font will do.

Art New Media brochure

tags: cool finds, design history, flom, thoughts, typography // 2 comments  . . .