Today we do it the elegant way. I have decided to talk a bit about an old style serif font.

The font’s name is:

History

Sabon has been created by the German typographer and calligrapher Jan Tschichold in 1967.

The font bases on the famous Garamond-font, but Tschichold made it more legible. At that time typesetting didn’t happen on computers, as we know it. Printers used so called phototypesetting machines. Major systems were Monotype and Linotype and by creating the Sabon Tschichold made sure that reproduction on both systems were brought to the same standard.

A German Printer Konrad Berner printed the specimen of Garamond around 1592,  Tschichold later used for designing Sabon. Berner was married to the widow of Jaques Sabon, a French typefounder, after whom this font was named. Sabon, the typefounder, was the heir of Claude Garamond, so it seems to be quite natural that a font basing on Garamond is named after Jaques Sabon.

Year of Design

1967

Weights

Usually 4 weights: roman, which is the normal or regular weight of Sabon, bold, italic and bold italic.

My Sabon even offers a Small Caps set.

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Description

Sabon is a very elegant font. It is also very harmonic, easy to read. It’s serifs are very well elaborated and appear to have a special swing in them. The font is classified as so called “Garalde” as homage to Claude Garamond and Aldus Manutius.

Sabon has very fine proportions, which underlines her elegant character. The typeface appears to be very smooth.

Lore Ipsum

I think that this proofs what I just mentioned about the Sabon.

Easy to read in big and small sizes – btw. I have added the sizes of the type next to the line.
We see a very equal distribution between black and white.

Usage

Anything that should appear elegant and should be easy to read.

Use it for books, magazines, newspapers, brochures or even flyers, business texts, letterheads.  You can’t do wrong with Sabon especially when you want to have a slightly conservative appearance.

Some prayer books are printed with Sabon.

It is the official logotypeface of Standford University.

Vogue magazine has its headline printed in a Sabon version.

What I like about the font

First I like the elegant appearance of Sabon.

I like the idea that you can use it for books as well as for business cards.

It is fantastic to have a font which is easy to read. And I like that it has a tradition of its own, although it was designed in the  60s of last century, it is related to Renaissance.

Letter gallery

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