TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Mon Mar 25 15:34:17 EDT 2024

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Century and Valencia

Herminio Javier Fernandez tells the story of the rip-off typeface Valencia from its roots. Here is the timeline:

  • 1884-1906: Linn Boyd Benton and his son Morris Fuller Benton design Century and its variants including Expanded and Old Style. These types are very legible at small sizes.
  • 1909: Heinrich Hoffmeister (1857-1921) creates Amts Antiqua at his small Leipzig foundry. It looks very much like Century.
  • 1965: A Century clone, Madison BQ (Berthold), is created and becomes popular in newsprint. Until the 1980s, the Boston Globe uses it.
  • 1980s: Bitstream renames Madison Century 725. Under this name, it continues its popularity as a newsprint type, e.g., at the Spanish La Nación.
  • 1980s: Walter Florenz Brendel (1930-1992) produces hundreds of knock-offs of existing fonts in his Brendel Collection, and this includes a Madison copy named Valencia. In 14 styles, this typeface is now available from TypeShop/Elsner+Flake.
  • 1980s: SG Madame (Scangraphic) is another clone of Madison and Century.
  • 2002: Martin Kotulla adds Madison-like fonts called Madeira and Magazine to his SoftMaker MegaFont XXL CD.
In 2007, Uli Stiehl mentions that both Century and Amts Antiqua may have been rooted in types dating back to ca. 1840. Also, he decries FontShop's decision, in their popular Fontbooks, to remove Madison BQ and replace it and any mention of Hoffmeister by Madame SG.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Century and Valencia
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INTERNAL LINKS
History of type ⦿ David and Goliath ⦿








file name: Bitstream Century725 B T Black 1990 2003







Luc Devroye ⦿ School of Computer Science ⦿ McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 ⦿ lucdevroye@gmail.com ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html