5 ms·
Garamond is a fine font, but using Garamond Italic should be banned by law. I scream internally when I see it and how the different letters don't match visually
by jakub_g 5y ago
Garamond is a fine font, but using Garamond Italic should be banned by law. I scream internally when I see it and how the different letters don't match visually. Printed books using Garamond Italic are the worst.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=garamond+italic&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=garamond+italic&iax=images&ia=imag...
- jancsika 5y ago> I scream internally when I see it and how the different letters don't match visually. What's wrong with it? You mean stuff like the vertical part of "j" and "p" having slightly different angles?
- jakub_g 5y agoMost letters look like at 20% angle, while a few others at 10% angle. Compare uppercase I vs lowecase t. Also m and a few others.
- jordic 5y agoPerhaps we need an expert on design history. Typefaces are a complex thing with lot's of design decisions behind.
- ivanbakel 5y agoNot the OP, but I can see why they don't like it. Just looking at "Garamond Italic" written in Garamond Italic, the "m" jumps out for having a completely different angle to its surrounding letters in the word (apart from the "n", which is similarly super-slanted. The effect of going between the angles of "I" and "t" is similarly offensive.
- chungy 5y agoOh man, that is awful -- you weren't kidding. I don't know what's wrong with plain ol' Computer Modern (as TeX uses by default).
- ahartmetz 5y agoComputer Modern is IMO way too thin and has huge, pointy serifs. I like Palatino (Latex: mathpazo) best, but Garamond - a similar style - is fine, too.
- empthought 5y agoHave you tried Charter?
- ahartmetz 5y agoCharter seems OK, the thickness variation seems somehow strange to me (couldn't decide whether to vary it or not?), but I like that it doesn't vary thickness quite as much as Palatino on numeric digits.
- mananaysiempre 5y agoFor TeX typesetting Utopia (and derivatives like Fourier and Erewhon) is also good if you want something that was designed for book (not journal or newspaper) body text but has a less mediaeval feel (and more Cyrillic, sigh).
- vngzs 5y agoComputer Modern looks terrible on computers (ironically!). It's only tolerable on relatively high-DPI printed documents which are capable of rendering the intricate, narrow parts of the legends. I wish people would stop using it for digitally distributed PDFs.
- howinteresting 5y agoI think Computer Modern looks fantastic digitally (even on a 110ppi screen), and lends an air of seriousness to the text.
- chungy 5y agoI agree with this. I've never really seen it as objectionable.
- brimble 5y agoGood lord. Is there a reason it's like that, or is it simply extremely poorly-made? That looks like a not-very-good machine learning algorithm tried to make a font variant.
- egypturnash 5y agoWhether designed by Garamond, Jannon or someone else, Garamonds share a few central characteristics. Their serifs — the little extra strokes on letters like “i” and “r” — are often sloped or slightly scooped. They have low “x-heights” — that’s the height of a lowercase letter like “e,” “a” and, obviously, “x” — and high crossbars, or horizontal strokes, on letters like “e.” Garamond’s strokes are widely varied and full of character — they were originally made, after all, to resemble handwriting. The italics tend to reveal some of their most idiosyncratic strokes, such as the loop on a lowercase “k,” or the upward flick at the bottom of a lowercase “h.” - from the article
- brimble 5y agoThanks, that illuminates some of it, but the main thing that stood out to me was the extreme differences in slant on some letters. Those simply look like (very obvious) mistakes—but surely aren't? That aspect doesn't really make it look more like handwriting, to me, but kinda ransom-lettery.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- AlanYx 5y agoThe worst offender is Monotype Garamond -- not all Garamond/Garalde/Aldine faces have such oddball italics. That italic isn't even based on a historical Garamond; it's based on a related face by Jean Jannon, which is part of the reason it doesn't match.
- jsmith99 5y agoThe Harry Potter books in many countries are all set in Adobe Garamond and the italic really makes the spells stand out in a spiky, sizzly, and slightly sinister way that works well.
- barrenko 5y agoInteresting, thanks.
- ternaryoperator 5y agoI disagree. I love that Garamond italic is not a slightly cleaned-up oblique version of the Roman font, but an entirely different font of its own. I wish more typefaces would do that. In stately Garamond text, the italic stands out, which helps it fulfill its use in emphasis. However, I agree that because of this heightened visibility, its use should be limited to where it's truly needed. It's sort of like chili powder: used wisely, it enhances; used excessively, and it draws too much attention to itself.
- jiggawatts 5y agoI had to write dozens of long technical documents for a company that used Garamond as their standard font. Except that the guy who designed the templates used a Mac and had no idea how bad the Garamond font looks on Windows. The italic especially made my eyes bleed. My solution when I couldn’t take it any more was to use an Adobe Garamond font and embed it in the document…
- DiggyJohnson 5y agoDo you recommend a font similar to Garamond with better congruence between the regular serif and italic?
- vitorsr 5y agoEhrhardt [1] is a personal favorite of mine. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrhardt_(typeface) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrhardt_(typeface)
- micromacrofoot 5y agoGeorgia does italics better and is more widely available
- mark-r 5y agoI think Georgia is highly underrated.
- wrycoder 5y agoThose are terrible! @enricozb, below, posted a much better Garamond Italic: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/EB+Garamond#standard-styles https://fonts.google.com/specimen/EB+Garamond#standard-style...