What is a colophon?
The colophon is a brief section that states publisher (name, location, date, insignia) and book production information. Historically, colophons were located in the back matter, but, nowadays, they can also be featured in the front matter, along with copyright details or within a Website that describes how the site is made, its tools, and supporting technology.
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Most typefaces have been updated or redrawn by the same or different foundries over the years, producing many versions and styles additions to their respective font families. What follows is a general overview of each of the typefaces used in our page headers.
Descriptions by page.
WHAT WE DO
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An aggregation of outdoor signs, this composition telegraphs the breadth and scope of The Type Guys. Physical signs vary in shape, size, and form – from painted signs, to neon, to manufactured signs – all with a specific purpose.
“Analyze It” Header: GARAMOND
Garamond is an old-style serif typeface, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond. Typical characteristics include organic strokes, upright designs, and structures resembling handwriting with a pen. Initially designed for print media, Garamond has excellent readability in books, but is not well-adapted to reading text on screens.
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HOW WE DO IT
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Letraset came out with their dry transfer lettering system, which pioneered the technique beginning in 1961. The dry rub-down transfer technique became very popular over the next few decades because of its ease of manipulation, its low price, and the quality of the rendered layout.
“Fix It” Header: HELVETICA
Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designers, Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Its use became a hallmark of the International Typographic Style that emerged from the work of Swiss designers in the 1950s and ’60s, becoming one of the most popular typefaces of the mid-20th century.
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THE TYPE GUYS
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Handset and composed in 36pt Bauer Bodoni metal type at the Center for Book Arts in New York City. The Center houses a vast collection of “rescued” metal typefaces from the scrapyards as phototypesetting took over the industry.
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“Make It” Header: AVENIR
The word Avenir is French for “future.” As the name suggests, the family takes inspiration from the geometric style of sans-serif typeface developed in the 1920s that took the circle as a basis, such as Futura. Designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1987, he intended Avenir to be a more organic interpretation of the geometric style, more even in color, and suitable for extended text setting. Avenir is a default font on many digital word-processing platforms.
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ABOUT US
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Inspired the game of Scrabble® – the ultimate word game where every letter counts – is the perfect analogy to describe variety of solutions offered by The Type Guys.
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“We’re It” Header: KELLY SLAB
Kelly Slab is a new geometric, modern-looking slab-serif font. Created under the influence of popular geometric fonts from the 1930s with square slab-serifs, such as “City” by Georg Trump. It is designed for attention and impact in advertising, headings, major labels and logotypes. It can also work well in larger point size text blocks. ​
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BRACKET FEES
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The simple setting of all the letters in Kelly Slab has been styled to render an illustrative look – via a gradient vignette and shadow effect – to depict depth and movement.
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“Price It” Header: DIDOT
The word/name Didot came from the famous French printing and type-producing Didot family. The Didot family’s development of a high-contrast typeface with an increased stress is contemporary to similar faces developed by Giambattista Bodoni in Italy. It was widely used in the mid and late 1700s for text publication. Didot is often used in association with elegant book and magazine design, as well as advertising that expounds classicism.
FILE UPLOAD
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A typeset of various fonts depicting many styles – Transitional, Modern, Slab Serif, along with Gothic, Humanist, and Geometric Sans Serif – including a few revivals from the past.
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“Upload It” Header: FUTURA
Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Paul Renner and released in 1927. It is based on geometric shapes, especially the circle, and is commonly considered the major typeface development to come out of the Constructivist orientation of the Bauhaus movement in Germany. Futura is timelessly modern, and today, continues to be a popular typographic choice to express strength, elegance, efficiency, and conceptual clarity. Avant Garde, designed by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase in 1968, drew inspiration from Futura.
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TYPE ODYSSEY
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Created from a selection of hand-built display fonts from a 2022 Pratt Graduate Design Typography class, these unique characters depict experimental letterforms that break traditional norms. All of the letters represented were part of a larger brand identity.
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“Learn It” Header: BASKERVILLE
Baskerville is a serif typeface designed in the 1750s by John Baskerville, in Birmingham, England, and cut into metal. Baskerville is classified as a transitional typeface, intended as a refinement of what are now called old-style typefaces of the period. Libre Baskerville is a web font optimized for body text with a taller x-height, wider counters, and less contrast, for optimal on-screen legibility.
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OUR TYPE FAMILY
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A typeset strip emulating a video title enhanced by lighting effects.
“Watch It” Header: LINOTYPE PALATINO
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BRIEF HISTORY
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A montage of letterforms depicting the benchmarks in the evolution of type design and printing technology – beginning with Gutenberg’s Fraktur font through today’s OpenType variable format.
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“Know It” Header: TIMES NEW ROMAN
Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned by the British newspaper The Times in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison. The clarity and beauty of this typeface has endured the test of time which is why it became one of the world’s most successful type creations.
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