Plantin

Category	Serif
Classification	Old style serif
Designer(s)	Robert Granjon Frank Hinman Pierpont Fritz Stelzer
Foundry	Monotype
Date created	1913

Plantin is anold-style seriftypeface created in 1913 by the BritishMonotype Corporation for theirhot metal typesetting system. Named after the sixteenth-century printerChristophe Plantin,^[1] it is loosely based on a Gros Ciceroroman type cut in the 16th century byRobert Granjon held in the collection of thePlantin–Moretus Museum inAntwerp.^[2]

The intention behind the design of Plantin was to create a font with thicker letterforms than were often used at the time: early printing on absorbentbook paper led to ink spread, but by 1913 innovations in smoothing andcoated paper had led to reduced ink spread and made old types often look skeletal on paper.^[3] Monotype engineering managerFrank Hinman Pierpont visited the Plantin-Moretus Museum, where he acquired a printed specimen of historic types.^[4]

Plantin was one of the first Monotype Corporation revivals that was not simply a copy of a typeface already popular in British printing; it has proved popular since its release and has been digitised. Monotype followed it with revivals of many other classic typefaces in the 1920s and 30s.^[1] Plantin would later also be used as one of the main models for the creation ofTimes New Roman in the 1930s.^[5] The Plantin family includes regular, light and bold weights, along with corresponding italics.

At the time Plantin was released, Monotype'shot metal typesetting system, which cast new type for each printing job, was developing a reputation for practicality in trade and mass-market printing, but the designs offered by Monotype were relatively basic choices, such as a"modern" face, an"old style" and aClarendon.^[1]

James Moran andJohn Dreyfus suggested that an inspiration for the design may have been a c. 1910 family from theShanks foundry known as "Plantin Old Style", advertised as highly legible.^[6] This was actually a bold design based onCaslon, with no connection to Christophe Plantin or Granjon, but Dreyfus suggests it may have prompted Monotype to research Christophe Plantin and the collection of the Plantin-Moretus Museum.^[7]

The Plantin-Moretus Museum was created in 1876 from Plantin's collection which had been preserved and added to by his successors in business. It is notable as the world's largest collection of sixteenth century typefaces.^[8] Although Plantin commissioned types from Granjon, according toHendrik Vervliet the specific type Pierpont's design was based on began to be used by the Plantin-Moretus Press only in the 18th century, after Plantin had died and his press had been inherited by theMoretus family.^[9] (It has been reported that Plantin did use the long letters of the type as replacement letters to cast a type byGaramond shorter height, but Vervliet suggests that these may have been a set of slightly different characters cut by Granjon separately.^{[9][3][4][10]})

Plantin was designed and engraved into metal at the Monotype factory inSalfords,Surrey, which was led by Pierpont and draughtsman Fritz Stelzer. Both were recruits to Monotype from the German printing industry.

The choice to revive a French Renaissance design was unusual for the time, since most British fine printers of the period preferred eitherCaslon or revivals of the fifteenth-century style ofNicolas Jenson (recognisable from the tilted 'e'), following the lead ofWilliam Morris'sGolden Type, both of which Monotype would also develop revivals of.^[1] However, other revivals of Aldine/French renaissance typefaces followed from several hot metal typesetting companies in the following decades, including Monotype's ownPoliphilus,Bembo andGaramond, Linotype'sGranjon andEstienne and others, becoming very popular in book printing for body text.

The design for Plantin preserved the largex-height of Granjon's designs, but shortened theascenders and descenders and enlarged thecounters of the lowercase 'a' and 'e'.^[4] Not all the letters were Granjon's: the letters 'J', 'U' and 'W', not used in French in the sixteenth century, were not his, and a different 'a' in an eighteenth-century style had been substituted into the font by the time the specimen sheet was printed.^{[9][11][12][13]}

The 1742 specimen of Claude Lamesle (notable for its printing quality) provides a specimen of the Granjon type in its original state.^[14][9] Mosley has close-up images of some characters of the face.^[12][a]

With its relatively robust, solid design compared to theDidone and "Modernised Old Style" faces popular in the early twentieth century (which Monotype already had made versions of), Plantin proved popular and was often particularly used by trade and newspaper printers using poor-quality paper in the metal type period and beyond. Monotype's advertising emphasised its popularity with advertisers, highlighting its use in the "Mrs Rawlins" series of adverts for washing starch.^{[16][17][18][19]} As the basic font is relatively dark on the page, Monotype offered a 'light' version as well as a bold, whichHugh Williamson describes as "particularly suitable for bookwork."^[20]

During theinterwar period the face was adopted and popularized byFrancis Meynell's Pelican Press and by C. W. Hobson's Cloister press, and also used occasionally byCambridge University Press.^[4] A custom version, "Nonesuch Plantin" was also cut for Meynell'sNonesuch Press, one of the firstfine printers to use Monotype machines, with extended ascenders and descenders on the lower-case.^[21] Type designerWalter Tracy noted that this changed the type's appearance to a surprising extent: "it look[s] not only more refined but as if it derived from another period:Fournier's, say [in the eighteenth century], not Granjon's."^[22] It was appropriately used by the Bodley Head to print Meynell's autobiography.^[23] Monotype also created a condensed version, News Plantin, forThe Observer in the late 1970s.^[24][1] Aninfant variety of the typeface called Plantin Infant also exists,^[25] withsingle-story versions of the letters 'a' and 'g' and a 'y' with two straight sides.

The font was used as the signature font forABC News from 1978 until 1999. In more recent usage, the magazineMonocle is set entirely in Plantin andHelvetica.^[26] The body text of allMagic: The Gathering cards is also set in Plantin.

Plantin was the basis for the general layout of Monotype's most successful typeface of all, Times New Roman.^[27][28] Times is similar to Plantin but "sharpened" or "modernised", with increased contrast (particularly resembling designs from the eighteenth and nineteenth century) and greater "sparkle".^[29][30][31] Allan Haley commented that Times New Roman "looks like Plantin on a diet."^[32]

As the Plantin design is in the public domain, adaptations and unofficial digitisations (including simple knock-offs) have been released. Galaxie Copernicus by Chester Jenkins andKris Sowersby is a reinterpretation of Plantin.^[33][34] Sowersby followed it with a newspaper typeface, Tiempos, influenced by Times New Roman^[35][36] and later, in mid-2023, released a digital revival of the metal Plantin 110 cut itself—rather than a reinterpretation—called Martina Plantijn.^[37] Fabric Serif by Sindre Bremnes and Frode Helland of Monokrom Type Foundry is another reinterpretation.^[38][39] Other similar designs include Musee by DSType^[40] and Erato by Hoftype.^[41] In 2024The Economist adopted a new typeface Economist Serif designed by Henrik Kubel and based on Plantin.^[42]

Aldine 721 is Bitstream's version of Plantin^[43][44] and Francisco Serial is a version by Softmaker.^[45]

• Plantin

• Old style serif typefaces
• Linotype typefaces
• Typefaces with infant variants
• Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1913
• Monotype typefaces

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