Skyline’s specialty is antique revivals, and beyond that we like to cast the odd, rare, or strange. Haven’t done much in the way of “job” type—that is, classic, mainstream type faces that would be used for text composition. We’ve been moving toward bringing some balance to our product line in that direction. The four finalists were Bookman Old Style, Garamont, Goudy Old Style, and Times New Roman. Bookman won out; it was the cool alternates and specials that did it. This face will be produced along with the companion Italic in a run of sizes, one pair each month. Here we go: Bookman Old Style and Bookman Old Style Italic in 30 point.
Italics are kerned, and kerns are the bane of typefounders. A kern is an instance of the face of the type overhanging the body. This is necessary to avoid excessive space between letters in an angled face. It’s easy (with certain exceptions) to cast kerned type—but kerns are fragile, and prone to breaking off both in shipment and in use. For this 30 point, the first of the italics in this series, we initially cast all characters to full set-width (no kerning). We then went through six proving cycles, recasting character after character with kerns left, right, or both, to accomplish the best fit. Kerns must extend enough for good visual fit between letters but not so much that they are too prone to breaking. For this 30 point, we settled on a proportionate kern length of 1/15th of the point size, or two points. Thirty-five of the 77 characters are kerned. We will use this as a template for the other sizes, with kern length similarly proportionate to the point size. Hopefully this new series will be something folks like and can use. Typefounding is not an easy business!
Recast and back in stock: Cloister Old Style 30pt, with Lowercase Supplement.
Our stated mission of Preserving the Craft is not limited to typefounding, but extrapolates to letterpress printing in general. Skyline has provided sponsorship support to various organizations which share the mission—this is part of our give-back. Over the year we contributed to four such volunteer-run groups, and last month for Giving Day we sent donations to four more. These eight community-based, nonprofit letterpress organizations are listed on our home page with live links. We salute them for all they do.