Kicking our blog off with its inaugural post, Project Team member Nick Canty considers the typeface used by the Project, how it came about, and what other purposes it has been adopted for since its initial design.
Rockwell typeface. Credit: https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mti/rockwell/
The typeface used on our Project logo is called Rockwell. It was designed in 1934 by the in-house studio of the Monotype foundry overseen by Frank Hinman Pierpont, a Connecticut engineer and linotype designer who moved to London. Rockwell is a distinctive version of a geometric slab serif design, which has retained its popularity since its appearance in the 1930s. When it was released, Rockwell had several unique characteristics, including differences in spacing, letter weight and subtle changes in glyph formation.
The Guinness World Records used Rockwell in some of their early-1990s editions. Informational signage at Expo 86 in Seville made extensive use of the Rockwell typeface and the Docklands Light Railway also used a bold weight of this typeface in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Rockwell is today used by the UK poetry publisher Tall Lighthouse for all their books, as well as on their website.
Rockwell is still available through Monotype, now an international corporation with offices throughout the world and with over 18,000 typefaces available.
Further reading:
http://catalog.monotype.com/family/monotype/rockwell
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/family.aspx?FID=142
The Academic Book of the Future 