"The Garamond Guy, if you will, is irritatingly uptight, so certain of his own profundity that his words must be conveyed with the weight of a 500-year-old Fren

"The Garamond Guy, if you will, is irritatingly uptight, so certain of his own profundity that his words must be conveyed with the weight of a 500-year-old French typeface." I think that statement is rather unfair and is says more about the author than Garamond users. My opinion of Garamond is that it is a truly wonderful typeface and I have an old Adobe version on one of my PCs but I very rarely use it. In fact, the last time I recall using it in any serious way was several decades ago. Thinking about it, I just don't do the kind of work that warrants it use. One associates Garamond with fine coffee table art books and I'm not in that game. That said, whenever I see it in such a publication I admire its use and think it's ideal for that application. I reckon the article's criticism of Garamond's small x height is valid but only when it's adopted to areas where it's not fully suitable, PC screens and low resolution printers for instance. I recall when I first put Adobe's Garamond on my PC that it came as a type-1 font and I did many experiments with it but I was never really happy with it for general use. In printing, I couldn't get it to look good under at least 1200 DPI and I reckon it's not optimal until it's printed to at 1600 DPI or higher. The reason is that its delicate serifs often don't hold sufficient ink to maintain the contrast and they become washed out. If you print darker with a low resolution printer to try to overcome the problem the edges no longer look sharp, thus it's high resolution or use a different typeface (and the same problem applies to photocopies). To me, Garamond is a typeface best suited to traditional letterpress where the ink pools in the corners, edges and serifs, this gives it an enhanced sharpness and the typeface truly sparkles. When letterpress is done just right and Garamond is used I reckon the results are spectacular. Garamond may be 500 years old but when used in the right place for the right job it's certainly not obsolete. Incidentally, I became fascinated with Claude Garamond and those great early publishers such as Christophe Plantin and when I had the opportunity to do so I visited the Plantin Morteus Museum in Antwerp. Anyone who has a serious interest in traditional printing or the early history of of typefaces should try to visit there. BTW, it's a UNESCO World Heritage site: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantin-Moretus_Museum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantin-Moretus_Museum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-jTyb6xfQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-jTyb6xfQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbuFMAvHIH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbuFMAvHIH0