Typography Fall 2014: Claude Garamond!

Claude Garamond was a Parisian publisher and punch cutter from the 16th century. Born in Paris, France circa 1490 from 1561, Garamond was a true wonder to his century. He was quite an innovative man for the type world. Garamond was truly a loyal man to his mentors and to his king.

Claude started his days off as an apprentice under Simon de Colines, a French printer, and then later under Geoffrey Tory who was a typographer who put his interests into the humanistic genre of typography. After gaining such promise from being under his mentors and blooming into a true artisan into the craft, King Francis I asked a special request of Garamond. The king wanted him to reproduce a Greek font originally made by Angelos Vergetios. So, of course, Garamond remade the font and it was known as “Grecs du Roi”. “Grecs du Roi” later became the kings’ own personal font.

After this great feat, Garamond then went on to use his font in another way. He finally was able to publish a book known as "Pio et Religiosa Meditatio" by David Chambellan in 1545. But, before he was able to do this, Garamond had developed his own roman and italic font, based off the older typefaces of Aldus Manutius, known as “Garamond”.

Sadly, sixteen years later Claude past away in France. This is where things start to get confusing. Garamonds’ type punches were sold to Christophe Plantin, another book publisher. Christophe had used Garamonds’ type for his publishing company for many years to come. Now, jump to 1621. A typographer named Jean Jannon had produced a type that was very similar to Garamond. However, the font was more asymmetrical and had uneven slopes and axises. Jannons’ type had disappeared for a good bit until French National Printing Office had found it again. Jannons’ type was mistaken for Garamond though because it was almost like it but a true typographer would know the difference. Beatrice Warde was the one to determine who the winner of the war of the original font was in 1927. Through all of the years of confusion, this brought on the revivals of Garamond such as: Adobe Garamond, ITC Garamond, Stempel Garamond, Linotype Grajon, Sabon, and many more.