Stempel Garamond was first issued by the Stempel foundry
almost a hundred years ago as Garamond-Antiqua. It was—and
remains—one of the more faithful and attractive revivals of the
Garamond typefaces. There have been a number of versions since,
clones, reissues, digitalizations. One of the better known would be
the free URW++ Garmond No.8, which may be found readily
online. It is ‘almost’ an open license font; a publisher needn’t
worry about using it for print or embedding it in a PDF. I see it
pretty much as a publisher’s starting kit, dependable and usable
for pretty much any project.
Incidentally, its
italics are based on ones actually designed by Claude Garamond, where
many other Garamond typefaces use italics by Robert Granjon, a
respected successor of Garamond.
The Garamond
Original typeface—a name used by both Bitstream and
SoftMaker—is essentially a clone of Stempel. As with
Garamond No.8, they lack opentype features for those who want
or need them, though SoftMaker does offer separate small caps. That
makes up for much. The typeface is included in SoftMaker’s MegaFont
collection, which remains a rather good deal.
Not surprisingly,
various opentype projects based on Garamond No.8 have popped
up over the last couple decades but none have seemed to go much of
anywhere. Be that as it may, the versions that are available are
quite viable alternatives to commercial Garamonds or the popular EB
Garamond and other open license Garamond (or Garamond-like)
fonts. Stempel Garamond, under whatever name, is a good choice
for anyone producing books.
We have used versions
in all Stephen Brooke’s fantasy novels set among the Mora (the
Malvern Trilogy, the Mora Trilogy, etc). We are entirely likely to
use Stempel again in books to come. Indeed, we consider it our
default for novels.
