TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Fri Sep 11 00:27:31 EDT 2015

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ABOUT

Joseph Blumenthal

New Yorker (1897-1990) who wrote frequently about typography and made Emerson in 1936 at Monotype. Jerry Kelly writes about his contributions in David Pankow's edited book, American Proprietary Typefaces. Mac McGrew: Emerson and Emerson Italic---a completely different style, unrelated to the one above---were designed by Joseph Blumenthal, New York printer and book designer. The original version was hand-cut by Louis Hoell in Germany, and the typeface was cast by the Bauer Foundry in 1930. It was called Spiral for the press at which this distinguished typographer produced many notable books, and was renamed Emerson when the Monotype Corporation of London recut it in 1935. It is a modernized oldstyle letter, adapted for photogravure reproduction, but retaining a reasonably light face, fairly condensed. Wikipedia on Emerson: The typeface's first appearance was in a special, private-press edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Nature, and so the Monotype version became known as Emerson. Emerson can be recognised for its distinctive foot serifs on the lowercase a, d and u, and its wide capitals (especially the M). The typeface shares characteristics with the classic renaissance types, and its soft, blunt appearance was designed to suit photogravure reproduction.

For a digital revival of Spiral / Emerson, see Spiral (2014) by AR Types / Ari Rafaeli.

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