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Sabon is an old-style serif typeface designed by the German-born typographer and designer Jan Tschichold (1902–1974) in the period 1964–1967. It was released jointly by the Linotype, Monotype, and Stempel type foundries in 1967. The design of the roman is based on types by Claude Garamond (), particularly a specimen printed by the Frankfurt printer Konrad Berner. Berner had married the widow of a fellow printer Jacques Sabon, the source of the face's name, who had bought some of Garamond's type after his death. The italics are based on types designed by a contemporary of Garamond's, Robert Granjon. It is effectively a Garamond revival, though a different name was chosen as Garamond already carry this name.
A classic typeface for body text, Sabon's longstanding popularity has transcended its origin as a commission to fit a tight set of business requirements. Tschichold was commissioned by a coalition of German printers to create a typeface that could be printed identically on Linotype, Monotype or letterpress equipment, simplifying the process of planning lines and pagination when printing a book. The italic and bold styles were to take up exactly as much space as the roman, a feature imposed by the duplexing system of Linotype hot metal typesetting machines of the period. Finally, the new font was to be five per cent narrower than their existing Monotype Garamond, in order to save space and money.Cf. S. Garfield, Just My Type, p.251. Sabon's name was therefore considered appropriate: a Frenchman who had moved to Frankfurt, he had played a role in bringing Garamond's type into use in German printing four hundred years before.
Tschichold was well known as an eminent book designer in his own right, having promoted the now-popular ragged right style of book layout. A modernist, after the war, from 1947 to 1949, he played a hugely significant role in United Kingdom book design, creating a unified, simple and inexpensive layout design for Penguin Books, a publisher which specialised in issuing cheap paperbacks. In his early life, he had lived in Leipzig and in the 1920s had devised a "universal alphabet" for German language, improving its non-phonetic and promoting the replacement of the jumble of fonts with a simple sans serif. Tschichold had become more interested in classical book design as his career progressed, and Sabon is a relatively faithful, organic book typeface strongly rooted in tradition. The name "Sabon" was proposed by Stanley Morison, an influential British Monotype artistic advisor and historian of printing. Different drawings were used for machining the larger sizes. (2025). 9781581150827, Allworth Press. ISBN 9781581150827 Tschichold used an Egenolff-Berner specimen sheet from 1592 to provide initial models to work from, choosing a Garamond face for the roman letters and a Granjon face for the italics.
An early first use of Sabon was the setting of the Washburn College Bible in 1973 by the American graphic designer Bradbury Thompson. All books of the King James biblical text were set by hand in a process called thought-unit typography, where Thompson broke the lines at their spoken syntactical breaks.
Sabon was also used as the typeface in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church (United States), as well as all of that church's secondary liturgical texts (such as the Book of Occasional Services and Lesser Feasts and Fasts).
Sabon was used in the 2000s as the official logo typeface of Stanford University until 2012.Stanford University Identity Toolkit, [1]. Retrieved 2012-11-15. It is also used by Örebro University, together with the typeface Trade Gothic.Örebro University Design Guidelines, . Retrieved 2012-05-29. Vogue and Esquire use a slightly modified version of it for headlines.Cf. S. Garfield, Just My Type, p.253; B. Willen & N. Strals, Lettering & Type, Princeton Architectural Press, New York City (2009), Sabon and Its Current Usage. Since 2010, First Things has used Sabon for the page text in its print edition. The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting uses Sabon for its Law Reports.
Fontsite released a version under the name Savoy, while Bitstream released a less faithful version under the name of Classical Garamond. Classical Garamond in use - Fonts In Use
Sabon Next Pro consists of 6 weights (Display, Regular, Demi, Bold, Extra Bold, and Black). Despite its designation, the 'Display' weight is considered as another grade of the 'Roman weight' and Porchez recommended it for 11pt or above, while the 'Regular' weight is designed for smaller text sizes such as 8pt.
Sabon Next Pro includes Latin Extended characters, but does not have Greek and Cyrillic support. OpenType features include Small caps (except in Black weight), Ligatures, Special ligatures, Alternates, Caps figures, Oldstyle figures, Tabular figures, Fractions, Superiors, Ornaments, Swash, Proportional Lining figures. Except in Black weights, the fonts include a collection of printers' ornaments and . These ornaments are also offered independently as a font named Sabon Next Ornaments.
This version of Sabon Next does have support for Greek, Cyrillic, and Turkish characters, but some OpenType features (e.g., stylistic sets and alternative numeric figures) are not available.
The family includes four fonts in two weights (regular, bold), with complementary italics. OpenType features include case-sensitive forms, fractions, ligatures, lining/old style figures, ordinals, superscript, small capitals.
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