When I wrote Typecasting: The Use (and Misuse) of Period Typography in Movies over two years ago, I closed it with:

“I hope to add more examples in a follow-up article. If you have any film/type gaffes to share, drop me a line.”

Well, lots of you did drop me a line, but so far I have not written the follow-up article. Instead, I have decided to post examples here, filed under “Son of Typecasting.”

One of the fonts I’m getting close to finishing is Grad, the most recent type design of Phil Martin. Phil designed it in the early 1990s for use in a newsletter he published called Re:Language. Until I started work on it earlier this year, it only existed as a set of bitmap fonts on Phil’s old DOS computer, and it only worked with the old desktop publishing/word processing program XyWrite.

Grad is essentially an enhanced and augmented version of Century Schoolbook. While Phil did his version by modifying bitmaps of the Bitstream version of Century Schoolbook, I went back to original American Type Founders specimens, creating my own version of Century Schoolbook, rather than relying on existing digital versions. My Century Schoolbook fonts won’t be released, but were used as the basis for the new Grad.

Stylistically, Grad is similar to late nineteenth century faces like Ronaldson or Bookman, with other touches that could only come from the mind of Phil Martin. In the initial release, there will be three styles: Regular, Italic, and Bold (as shown above). There is also a condensed style planned for later release.

If you want to see it in action in text, here is a PDF from Phil’s website (a chapter of his on-going autobiography) which is set in the final PostScript Type 1 versions of the fonts. [Update: Phil’s website no longer exists.]

I’m doing Grad at Phil’s request, but I will be marketing it in the usual venues and splitting the revenues with Phil.

A rather nice use of Refrigerator by Typographica guy Stephen Coles.

Notebook is a new section of the Mark Simonson Studio site where I can put various items which are of interest me and (I hope) to visitors such as yourself.

I might put here sketches of fonts I’m working on, sightings of my fonts in use (feel free to email me if you see any), how-to information, links to online resources, news and information about my website or projects I’m working on, or things I haven’t even thought of yet. You might even be tempted to call it a weblog, but please don’t.

I recently noticed Coquette used extensively in the book “Everything for Baby” by Adélaïdé D’Andigné and Alain Gelberger, published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang last year. Notice how the baby in the photo seems very interested in the font. Obviously, a budding typophile.

Flash application featuring Raster Gothic Condensed.

How it works: A “pangram” is a sentence or phrase that uses every letter of the alphabet at least once. Type your pangram in the box. Pangrammer Helper will tell you which and how many letters you haven’t used and how long your pangram is. It will also tell you how many of each letter has been used. It’s a real challenge to get them down to or near 26 letters without resorting to nonsense.

First released in 2003; 2.0 version released in 2008.

Note: Flash 8 or later plug-in required to run from the Web.

You can use Pangrammer Helper here in your Web browser, or download a standalone version (which doesn’t require the Flash Player plug-in) for your Mac or PC:

Mac Version (4.5mb)

Windows Version (1.8mb)

July 2020 Update: Now that we live in a virtually Flash-free world, someone has fortunately taken the trouble to build a web-based version called Pangrammer. Even better, it works on any modern web browser, whether on a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Created by Tory Anderson of Brigham Young University.