TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Mon Jan 20 08:07:41 EST 2025

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ABOUT

William Martin

British typefounder and punchcutter (1757-1830) who trained under Baskerville, and was active as supplier to the Boydells, Nicols, the Bewicks, and Bulmer, 1776-1815. Born in Birmingham, he died in London in 1815 (others say 1830). In 1792, he designed the Bulmer typeface for the Shakespeare Press.

Morris Fuller Benton's ATF version of the Baskerville style text typeface cut by William Martin for the English printer and publisher, William Bulmer, is called Bulmer. It is available from Bitstream in two styles, and from Monotype as Bulmer MT. ATF released the design in 1928.

Adobe and Monotype, which have a multistyle family [much larger than the Bitstream family], now called Bulmer MT, write: Designed in 1792, the Bulmer types are named not after their designer, William Martin, but after the printer who used them so well in his Shakespeare [sic] Press editions. In fact, it was Morris Fuller Benton who gave them the name back in 1928 when he was creating revivals for American Type Founders. Originally, Martin's type was the English answer to the sharp, fine letterforms of Italy's Bodoni and France's Didot type foundries. But the Bulmer types did more than imitate the starkness of the modern-style Didot-Bodoni types. By condensing the letterforms, giving the strokes higher contrast, and bracketing the serifs slightly, Martin made his typefaces both beautiful and practical.

Poster by Daniel Berkowitz.

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EXTERNAL LINKS
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INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type design in the United Kingdom ⦿ Modern style [Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Thorowgood, Computer Modern, etc.] ⦿ Morris Fuller Benton ⦿ Baskerville ⦿