Typography, as both an art form that stresses aesthetics and eye-pleasing characteristics and as a practical necessity that strives towards legibility, readability, and general ease of cognition, was developed centuries ago with several of the same nuances in mind. When considering the evolution of typography and the reasons for its continuing rise in popularity, one must look at typeface and fonts in a more specific way; in this case, a font that is still very much a part of the typography conversation today: Times New Roman. Initially called “Times Roman” by Linotype and eventually trademarked as the current “Times New Roman,” it was developed by The Times newspaper in England and first appeared publicly in the paper on October 3rd, 1932 (TYPOlis). After its release, it quickly became one of the leading font types for books on both Monotype and Linotype machines, though it was originally created for newspaper printing alone – which used stereotype-plates, not single line bars to create text (TYPOlis). Eventually, an infamous scholar well known for his sharp tongue and ample voice for critique, Stanley Morison, saw The Times’ use of the font and immediately set out to criticize and ridicule the typography of the paper – and thus was asked to design his own version of it by management (Loxley, 130). Since Morison himself did not design type, Victor Lardent, a designer at The Times, was commissioned by Morison to physically design the new text. He drew the revision and had a completely new typeface for the Monotype in only two months (TYPOlis).
Morison stressed that the paper wasn’t being published in a way to “entice reading,” (Loxley, 130) but rather was using large broadsheet pages that split up narrow columns of dense, clustered type – making it difficult for the reader to concentrate on the same line (Loxley, 130). Here, readability and legibility come into play as one of the earliest statements on the complexity of good typography and typeface, and now most experts on the subject agree that typography should be something that invites the reader into the text and clarifies its structure, not hinders the application of it (Bringhurst, 24). Times New Roman was developed by Morison for that very purpose, like most Serif fonts: for its legibility. Legibility and readability are two different things that typographers are concerned with; the former concerning the ease with which a letter or word is recognized and the latter referring to the ease with which a text can be understood (Lupton).
Success in legibility is a product of several factors that include but are not limited to things such as typeface and style, type size, leading, line length, and contrast between ink and paper color (Merriam-Webster, 330). Serif fonts are characteristically the most legible and the most readable typefaces because they are composed of simple lines and fluid angles; Times Roman is considerably more compact than some of its other spaciously designed contemporaries while still remaining highly legible – one of the main reasons for its continuing popularity (Merriam-Webster, 335). It manages to be compact without compromising the ease of its comprehension.
Now, Times New Roman is a bone of contention among many multibillion-dollar corporations with a hand in digital typography – Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe have all produced individual versions of the font, and patent wars are still raging because of legal issues that reached boiling point in the 1980s (Bigelow). Each company has been wrestling to create the most superior, artistically and “typographically correct” version (Bigelow), creating a whirlwind of new versions that realistically involve only minor and subtle updates. Thus, Times New Roman is a typeface still very much a part of the typographic world, having transcended from early metal and stereotyped mechanisms to modern day digital print. Its history is an involved and colorful one, and the reasons for its continued popularity and even controversy stem from its revolutionary origins molded by Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent.
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