Janson

File:Ehrhardt specimen.png

File:Ehrhardt italics.png

Miklós Kis, a Transylvanian Protestant pastor and schoolmaster, became deeply interested in printing after being sent to Amsterdam to help print a Hungarian Protestant translation of the Bible.{{cite book|last1=Lawson|first1=Alexander|title=Anatomy of a Typeface|date=1990|publisher=Godine|location=Boston|pages=158–168|isbn=978-0-87923-333-4|edition=1st|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FiJ87ixLs0sC&pg=PA158}}{{cite book|last1=Rozsondai|first1=Marianne|title=E codicibus impressisque : opstellen over het boek in de Lage landen voor Elly Cockx-Indestege|chapter=The bindings of books printed by Miklos Misztotfalusi Kis|date=2004|publisher=Peeters|location=Leuven|isbn=978-90-429-1423-0|pages=149–170|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6wjxd5FhxC0C&pg=PA149}} This was a period of considerable prosperity for the Netherlands and a time when its styles of printing were very influential across Europe, making it a centre for the creation of new typefaces.{{cite web|title=Miklós Kis|url=http://www.klingspor-museum.de/KlingsporKuenstler/Schriftdesigner/Kis/MKis.pdf|publisher=Klingspor Museum|access-date=6 November 2015}}{{cite web|title=Quarto|url=http://www.typography.com/fonts/quarto/overview/|publisher=Hoefler & Frere-Jones|access-date=9 December 2015}} He developed a second career as a punchcutter, an engraver of the punches used as a master for stamping matrices for casting metal type, selling his work to printers in the Netherlands and abroad. The style he worked in was based on French serif typefaces of the previous century, but with boosted x-height and higher stroke contrast, creating a higher-contrast, sharper effect.{{cite journal|last1=Johnson|first1=A. F.|authorlink1=Alfred F. Johnson|title=The 'Goût Hollandois'|journal=The Library|date=1939|volume=s4-XX|issue=2|pages=180–196|doi=10.1093/library/s4-XX.2.180}} It was later called the "Dutch taste" (goût hollandois), a term originating from the writings of Pierre Simon Fournier in the next century.{{cite web|last1=Mosley|first1=James|title=Type and its Uses, 1455-1830|url=http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/files/LRBS/Outline%20of%20Course_Type&itsUses2013_2.pdf|publisher=Institute of English Studies|access-date=7 October 2016|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161009181144/http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/files/LRBS/Outline%20of%20Course_Type%26itsUses2013_2.pdf|archive-date=9 October 2016}} Kis is considered to have been one of the most talented engravers active during this period, and perhaps uniquely wrote about his work in later life, allowing greater insight into his work than other earlier engravers. Kis also cut typefaces for other languages including Greek and Hebrew typefaces.

Kis returned to Transylvania around 1689 and may have left matrices (the moulds used to cast type) in Leipzig on his way home.{{cite book|last1=Morison|first1=Stanley|last2=Carter|first2=Harry|title=A Tally of Types|chapter=Chapter 8: Ehrhardt|date=1973|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=978-0-521-09786-4|pages=[https://archive.org/details/tallyoftypes0000mori/page/n120 117]–122|url=https://archive.org/details/tallyoftypes0000mori|url-access=registration|access-date=11 September 2015}}{{efn|This is a slight simplification: technically the mould is clamped around the matrix, however the matrix is the mould for the variable part of a sort.}} The Ehrhardt type foundry of Leipzig released a surviving specimen sheet of them around 1720, leading to the attribution to Janson.{{cite web|title=Ehrhardt Specimen Book image|url=http://showinfo.rietveldacademie.nl/janson/images/e4.png|publisher=Rietveld Academie|access-date=6 November 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151210205857/http://showinfo.rietveldacademie.nl/janson/images/e4.png|archive-date=10 December 2015|url-status=dead}}{{cite book|last1=Updike|first1=Daniel Berkeley|author-link=Daniel Berkeley Updike|title=Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Uses: Volume 2|date=1922|publisher=Harvard University Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/printingtypesthe02updi/page/44 44]|url=https://archive.org/details/printingtypesthe02updi|access-date=18 December 2015|chapter=Chapter 15: Types of the Netherlands, 1500-1800|quote=A headline...reads "Real Dutch Types"}}

Kis's surviving matrices were first acquired by Stempel, and are now held in the collection of the Druckmuseum (Museum of Printing), Darmstadt.{{cite web|last1=Mosley|first1=James|author-link=James Mosley|title=The materials of typefounding|url=http://typefoundry.blogspot.co.uk/2006/01/materials-of-typefounding.html|website=Type Foundry|access-date=14 August 2015}}{{cite web|title=Janson Text|url=http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/janson-text/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030305071639/http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/janson-text/|url-status=dead|archive-date=March 5, 2003|website=MyFonts|publisher=Adobe/Linotype|access-date=5 November 2015}}{{cite journal|last1=Heiderhoff|first1=Horst|title=The Rediscovery of a Type Designer: Miklos Kis|journal=Fine Print|date=1984|pages=25–30}} Kis's identity as the maker of the typefaces was rediscovered in the 1950s by comparison with type from Hungarian archive sources (including his autobiography) on which his name was identified.{{cite book|last1=Heiderhoff|first1=Horst|editor-last=Bigelow |editor-first=Charles|title=Fine Print on Type: the best of Fine Print magazine on type and typography|chapter=The Rediscovery of a Type Designer: Miklos Kis|date=1988|publisher=Fine Print|location=San Francisco|isbn=978-0-9607290-2-9|pages=74–80}}{{cite book|last=Morison|first=Stanley|editor-last=McKitterick |editor-first=David |title=Selected essays on the history of letterforms in manuscript and print|chapter=Chapter 8: Leipzig as a Centre of Type-Founding|date=2009|pages=149–170|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=978-0-521-18316-1|edition=Paperback reissue, digitally printed version|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-G2tQVnPiCAC&pg=PA132}}{{cite journal|last1=Buday|first1=George|title=Some More Notes on Nicholas Kis of the 'Janson' Types|journal=Library|pages=21–35|date=1974|volume=s5-XXIX | doi=10.1093/library/s5-XXIX.1.21}} Due to their survival, the Janson typefaces became popular with fine printers of the late Arts and Crafts period such as Updike, who could print books from them using hand-set type cast from surviving original matrices. In his book Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Uses, Updike commented that "although heavy, they retain considerable vivacity of line and have great capabilities when used with taste."

Despite its 17th-century origins, Janson is used in a wide variety of modern-day text applications. As of the magazine's 2011 redesign, Architectural Digest uses Janson for body text in all of its articles; so does Philosophy Now. It has also been used for the Journal of the British Printing Historical Society.{{cite journal|last1=Boag|first1=Andrew|title=Monotype and Phototypesetting|journal=Journal of the Printing History Society|date=2000|pages=57–77|url=http://www.letterpress.ch/APINET/IMMPDF/MONOPHOTO/PHS_journal.pdf|access-date=22 July 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160328052034/http://www.letterpress.ch/APINET/IMMPDF/MONOPHOTO/PHS_journal.pdf|archive-date=28 March 2016|url-status=dead}}

File:Apologia Bibliorum A biblia védelmezése, 1697.jpg) in 1697, after his return to Transylvania. It defends his somewhat contentious choices of editing and orthography in his Hungarian printing.]]

The Janson type was popular with twentieth-century typographers including Updike and Stanley Morison, who admired its design as something different to the Didone and neo-medieval types dominant in the nineteenth century, and several revivals were made in the twentieth century for the hot metal typesetting systems of the period.{{cite book|editor1-last=McKitterick|editor1-first=David|title=Stanley Morison & D.B. Updike: Selected Correspondence|date=1979|publisher=Scolar Press|pages=24–5, etc.}}

A revival of the face was designed in 1937 by Chauncey H. Griffith of the Mergenthaler Linotype foundry. The revival was taken from the original matrices, held since 1919 by the Stempel Type Foundry, which were Mergenthaler's exclusive agent in Europe. Griffith was a great admirer of the Janson designs, writing to Carl Rollins of Yale University Press that "I am so anxious to have the Linotype face worthy of its name. If I cannot succeed in satisfying myself that our interpretation of Janson will be worthy of the honored name it bears, we shall not hesitate a moment to scrap the whole work and forget it."{{cite book|last1=Tracy|first1=Walter|title=Letters of Credit|pages=38–9}}

The most common digital version, Janson Text, comes from a metal version produced by Hermann Zapf in the 1950s at Stempel. This was based on Kis' original matrices.Jaspert, Pincus, Berry, and Johnson, p. 122. Digitisations are available from Linotype, Adobe, Bitstream (adding Cyrillic glyphs), URW++ (adding an additional light and black weights) and others. A separate digital version is Elsner+Flake's Kis Antiqua Now. Described by Paul Shaw as the best digital version, it was designed by Hildegard Korger and Erhard Kaiser and originates from Korger's revival for the East German foundry VEB Typoart.{{cite web|last1=Korger|first1=Hildegard|last2=Kaiser|first2=Ehrhard|title=Kis Antiqua: Portrait of a Typeface|url=http://www.fonts4ever.com/portrait_typeface.php?language=en&id=5|website=Fonts4Ever|access-date=20 September 2017}}{{cite web|last1=Karner|first1=Michael|title=Ein Schriftporträt der Typoart Kis Now|url=http://www.typografie.co.at/images/pdfs-archiv/Kis.pdf|website=Design Typografie|access-date=20 September 2017}}

A separate common revival of the Janson types is Ehrhardt, created by Monotype in the 1930s.{{cite web|title=Ehrhardt|url=http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/ehrhardt/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030320191813/http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/ehrhardt/|url-status=dead|archive-date=March 20, 2003|website=MyFonts|publisher=Monotype|access-date=14 June 2015}} Somewhat more condensed than most Janson revivals, giving it a crisp, vertical appearance, it is a popular book typeface, particularly often used in the UK.{{cite web|last1=Butterick|first1=Matthew|title=Equity specimen|url=http://mbtype.com/pdf/equity-type-specimen.pdf|website=Practical Typography|access-date=13 July 2015}} Besides a number of revivals specifically of Ehrhardt (described in that article), two more by Linotype and Berthold have been sold under the name of Kis.{{cite web|last1=Luin|first1=Franko|title=Kis Classico LT|url=http://www.linotype.com/906/KisClassico-family.html?site=details|publisher=Linotype|access-date=11 September 2015}}{{cite web|title=Berthold Kis|url=http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/berthold/kis-bq/|website=MyFonts|publisher=Berthold|access-date=11 September 2015}}

Random House's Modern Library Classics collection has some of its books printed in a digitized version of Janson typeface.

{{Reflist|30em}}

{{notelist|30em}}

• Carter, Rob, Day, Ben, Meggs, Philip. Typographic Design: Form and Communication, Second Edition. Van Nostrand Reinhold, Inc: 1993 {{ISBN|0-442-00759-0}}.
• Molnár, József. Misztótfalusi Kis Miklós. Európai Protestáns Szabadegyetem: 2000. {{ISBN|963-506-329-6}}.

{{Commons category|Janson}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080511221107/http://www.textism.com/textfaces/index.html?id=14 Colophon on Janson on the textism site]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20140226024713/http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/P/P_055.html Adobe Systems' page on Janson]

On other Kis/Janson revivals:

On Ehrhardt:

• [http://www.mwbixler.com/spec_htm/spbk_ehrht.html Printed specimen from original hot metal type]
• [http://www.metaltype.co.uk/downloads/mr/mr_39_1.pdf Monotype Recorder from 1949, set in Ehrhardt]

Ehrhardt digitisations:

• [http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mti/ehrhardt-mt/ Ehrhardt typeface family at MyFonts.com]
• [http://practicaltypography.com/equity.html Butterick's revival, Equity]
• [http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/KisFB Kis FB] (as of 2015 no online sale)
• [http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mti/ehrhardt-mt/ Ehrhardt typeface family at MyFonts.com]
• [http://www.mwbixler.com/spec_htm/spbk_ehrht.html Printed Ehrhardt specimen from original hot metal type]
• [http://practicaltypography.com/equity.html Butterick's Ehrhardt revival, Equity]

Category:Old style serif typefaces

Category:Typefaces with text figures

Category:Linotype typefaces

Category:Letterpress typefaces

Category:Photocomposition typefaces

Category:Digital typefaces

Category:Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1937

Category:Typefaces designed by Chauncey H. Griffith