Type specimens are time capsules of typographic history. There is no substitute for seeing them in person, but you can now use a web browser to track the evolution of type design through the pages of over two hundred manufacturer catalogs from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. For years, I accessed these books via an unwieldy pile of b... See more

That’s not to say that people don’t have their opinions. John McWade, publisher of Before & After magazine, likes: Adobe Caslon, Adobe Garamond, ITC Stone Serif, and Janson Text 55 Roman. Coauthors James Craig, Irene Korol Scala, and William Bevington, of Designing With Type: The Essential Guide to Typography, say, “Baskerville is considered on

... See more