Stempel Garamond

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.

New Editions

This summer, we undertook the somewhat ambitious (or at least time-consuming) project of new typesetting for almost all of our books (only one remained untouched). This involved both using a new program and, for most, new fonts. And, of course, each book needed to be proofread, which added considerable time to the process.

The program we used was nothing more than LibreOffice, which is generally known as a word processing app but is also more than adequate for typesetting. Definitely better than Word or anything of that sort, as it was originally designed along the lines of a desktop publishing program. No, it won’t do all the things InDesign or Scribus can but it is completely acceptable for a typical novel.

We also moved away from the Bitstream typefaces in which the majority of our books were set. These were included with the Corel programs we own and use, but the licensing was always a bit nebulous. No one, Corel included, seemed to know whether it was acceptable to use them in print books. Be that as it may, they were also becoming a bit outdated, being all in truetype format; nothing wrong with that, to be sure, but we do appreciate the options offered by opentype.

Not that all the opentype fonts we are using provide those options. Some of our titles now use typefaces from SoftMaker. These are definitely licensed for print books and most, as with Bitstream, are clones of fonts that have been around a while. In many cases, we simply plugged in the SoftMaker alternative to what we had originally used. To be sure, they are never quite the same size and formatting must be adjusted.

But we are definitely moving toward open license fonts for future offerings. These days, there are plenty of perfectly good typefaces available for free, and free to use for anything. One can find quite a few at Google Fonts but it should be recognized the majority of offerings there are geared toward online use, not print. This includes the latest versions of fonts that have been around a while, such as EB Garamond and Crimson—we recommend going to the original projects, rather than the redesigns done specifically for Google.

We have finished this redesign and now comes the process of getting all the new versions up. This is not high priority, as the old versions are (mostly, anyway) well-enough done. But we will replace them over the next few months. More importantly, perhaps, we are also going to put all the ebooks (EPUB and PDF) up on our own site as free downloads. Getting those up should take some time too, as well as removing them from the store (at Lulu). Print will continue to be for sale and distributed to pretty much all booksellers, Amazon included.

Incidentally, we would recommend not buying the Kindle versions we had up at Amazon. It is to be assumed those will disappear eventually.

Libertine

The open license Linux Libertine typeface is sometimes touted as a Times New Roman replacement, though the two do not look particularly similar. Libertine is more in the style of such mid-20th Century neoclassical designs as Berling and Palatino.

But it is metrically equivalent to Times. That is, the same words in either typeface should take up about the same amount of space on a page. This means Libertine, as Times, is somewhat closely spaced, though it does not tend to look as cramped in long lines of text. We might compare it more to Adobe’s Minion, which is similarly economically spaced (and resembles more than a bit).

It may be noted that other typefaces also are equivalent to Times New Roman. That was a common goal in the early days of free typefaces, when TNR was ubiquitous both on and off line. The popular Gentium is one of the most successful of these, though it has more of a Goudy-like appearance (to us, anyway).

Is Libertine a decent typeface? Would we use it as book text? The answer must be a definite ‘maybe.’ One can pick at little details of the design but overall we feel it works pretty well. Definitely as well as many commercial fonts available. But, as Palatino, we might be inclined to reserve it for jobs other than novels. Poetry, perhaps—we have employed Gentium effectively for collections, making sure to keep it relatively large and well spaced. These are type faces that need room to breathe, that might look crowded on the page of a typical novel. Or, as with Minion (or even Times), Libertine could be effective in books or magazines with the text laid out in double columns, on wider pages.

This does not mean we would never use it a body text in a novel. We tested replacing the Berling we used in a couple novels with Linux Libertine and it fitted rather well. Yes, and it looked pretty good, too. So perhaps a future novel from Arachis Press will appear set in Libertine; we do intend to move to open license type, after all, and this one should give us no surprises. It can be one of those workmanlike choices we should all have available as a fall-back choice.

And we would be willing to recommend it as a choice for someone new to setting up a novel (or other book). It will work—and it’s way better than Times!

Crimson

Not long ago, I was recommending Crimson Pro over earlier versions of the Crimson typeface, which had various relatively minor problems. The Pro version was a redesign (not by the original designer) done at the request of Google. There were some fairly noticeable changes to the appearance but the other improvements made these acceptable. Crimson Pro remains a perfectly good and usable typeface, but one that is perhaps better for online use than print.

Then I found that Crimson Text had undergone a revision last year that addressed most of the problems. The Text version, at least to me, seems a more attractive font and a better choice for print. Pro seems to have a taller x-height, the details of serifs etc are more squared-off, and it has other small changes that might make it more readable on a web page but are not so desirable on a printed page. Not that it wouldn’t work, but Crimson Text looks more suited to that role, as well as more 'elegant' (which is very much a matter of personal judgement and taste). There have been comparisons of Crimson to Adobe’s Minion—and one can find similarities—but to my eye, it is more reminiscent of Plantin. And, as Plantin, it is an unassuming, do-it-all, Garamond-esque typeface (although Plantin derives more from the type of Granjon than Garamond). Crimson Text is certainly a useful font to have available.

Make certain you are getting the 2022 version of Crimson Text. What is offered at Google Fonts may not be the latest iteration but the face can be found at its GitHub project page. One of the problems with earlier Crimson type was that it didn’t always print properly in POD applications. This has supposedly been remedied but it would be prudent to watch for that sort of problem (it’s not the only typeface that’s been problematic in POD, including some that are commercial offerings).

No, Arachis Press has not released any books set in any version of Crimson. We almost certainly will, even if we do have a licensed version of Plantin available (we’ve used Plantin in a half-dozen books). It’s just the sort of fall-back typeface that is useful to have in ones toolkit, with an open license so we never need to worry about commercial use.

Humanist Slab-Serifs

The Mid-Twentieth Century saw the emergence of what are sometimes called (accurately enough) ‘humanist slab-serif’ typefaces. These retained—for the most part—the rectangular serifs of earlier slab fonts but varied the axis and the other strokes to create a more humanist feel to the forms, as with the humanist sans faces that were appearing in the same period. One seemingly simple yet elegant example is Candida, which received greater recognition when Bitstream reissued it half a century later.

Around the same time, the company released a somewhat similar humanist slab of their own design, Prima. At first glance, they seem quite alike but one begins to pick out the differences quickly enough. Prima is rather unlovely beside Candida, but the latter undoubtedly influenced (or inspired) its design. It may be noted that Prima, as Adobe’s Utopia and Bitstream’s own Charter, was designed to work well with the low resolution printers of its time.

A second look will tell us Prima is pretty much identical to Bitstream’s Vera Serif, which has since developed into Deja Vu, a popular and widespread free font. Why the name change? In part, we would assume, to mark it as their open license (more or less) offering. An entire family of different fonts was attached to both Prima and Vera, sans and mono versions, designed with the same uses in mind. Deja Vu Serif is certainly a decent enough font, and beloved of the open source community, but we would be unlikely to use it to print a book.

Candida, maybe, but we’d have to pay for a license! In honesty, it’s not the sort of typeface we’d normally consider for a novel. Perhaps for some niche project it would be just the thing. There are, to be sure, other nice-looking humanist slab-serif typefaces available, and some are even open license. It has again become a rather popular concept and more than one recent release, such as IBM’s big family of typefaces, has reflected the trend. By the way, we think IBM Plex Serif is decidedly ugly (a pastiche of varying styles). We’d take Deja Vu over it, any day—it, at least, stays true to its concept.

Kameron, by Vernon Adams, looks pretty decent and is available from Google Fonts. Its lack of a separate italic is, however, problematic, and it is perhaps not really suitable to book text. To be sure, there are also a number of faces that almost fit the classification but are not quite humanist or not quite true slabs. There is not a big gap between humanist slab-serifs and some neoclassical fonts. As always, how they look on the page is more important than what category we place them in.

 

The Free Font Ground-Breakers

Loads of free typefaces flooded the internet pretty much as soon as there was an internet. Many of them were pretty awful, perhaps having some use as display fonts but definitely not suited for use as print text. We’re talking original typefaces here, not clones or copies of older designs (though they certainly could be inspired by them). We’ll write of five serif body-text faces from those early days that were good enough to have survived and flourished.

The first is Deja Vu, the darling of open license fans everywhere, and common in the Linux world. This font has undergone various iterations and redesigns since a form of it first appeared as Bitstream’s Prima, later morphing into Vera and the Deja Vu most commonly distributed today. As some of its successful contemporaries, it was designed to work well with low resolution screens and printers, having simplified forms. Deja Vu is essentially in the humanist slab-serif style, with similarities to such older typefaces as Candida. There have been plenty enough new fonts (many free) of this sort released since but they are not necessarily any better. Not that Deja Vu is a particularly attractive font—we doubt we would print a novel in it. Possibly it could be useful for nonfiction or brochures or that sort of thing; it is readable at quite small sizes.

Bitstream released another font into the wild, intended for much the same roles: Matthew Carter’s Charter. This one draws from the Fournier designs of the Eighteenth Century (as does the somewhat more recent and similar Adobe Source Serif) but simplifies them into a sturdy and attractive font suited to the needs of the time. As computers and printers improved, those needs lessened but Charter remains a quite good and quite free typeface. We would have no qualms about printing a fiction book in Charter (or nonfiction, for that matter), though there are more ‘elegant’ choices. It is a do-it-all font.

As is Adobe’s Utopia, which was designed with much the same roles in mind. Utopia has something of a slab-serif look to it but also draws from ‘Transitional’ and ‘Modern’ typefaces such as Baskerville. It is another all-purpose font. Adobe intended it as a Times alternative, for office use; although it never caught on for that role it remains a quite good typeface. We have issued fiction books set in Utopia. It provides a balance of modern utility and classic elegance. Were we forced to use one font for everything, it might well be our choice. Utopia became free, apparently, somewhat by accident. Be that as it may, it is definitely free to use as we will these days.

Our final two, Gentium and Linux Libertine, were not designed with the shortcomings of early computing in mind, but as traditional typefaces from their origin. Both are frequently referred to as Times replacements, and compared to that font, but we do not find either particularly similar to the Times typeface. Oh, some, to be sure; any serif text face is bound to have similarities or it would become unreadable!

Gentium does share one quality with Times and that is that it is somewhat closely spaced. That is the big problem with Times; it was designed for use in narrow newspaper columns and can become too dense on a book-width page (not to mention a sheet of typewriter paper). Gentium isn’t quite so tightly packed but it is something of which one should be aware. We have used it for poetry books but not for novels. This is not to say we never would. To us, Gentium has a bit of a Goudy-esque feel, with definite calligraphic elements. It is a nice looking but not ostentatious font, workman-like and most certainly usable.

Libertine draws somewhat from the mid-Twentieth Century neo-humanist movement that gave us such typefaces as Palatino and Berling. Although it has never caught on to any great extent as a book font, it may be found in use all over the internet. Wikipedia is the most obvious example. That familiarity could admittedly be a strike against using it for print. We have not used it for a book yet, but intend to in upcoming releases (as a replacement for the above-mentioned Berling). Libertine has the bonus of a true matching sans, Linux Biolinum (Deja Vu Sans has no family resemblance to Deja Vu Serif).

These five have been around for over thirty years, plenty enough time to be thoroughly tested. We would have no reservations about their dependability; whether they have the appearance one desires is another question and one that must be answered on an individual, book-by-book basis. But they will get the job done; they will not let one down.

Garamond

Garamond—yes, the typeface for your fiction book. You’re always safe using some version of Garamond to print that novel or short story collection.

Well, maybe not every version. I would advise against using the one that comes installed with Windows for two reasons. One, it is an ‘American’ Garamond, on the spiky and aggressive side, and based on the designs of Jannon rather than Garamond himself. Two, you do not actually own the rights to use it in a print book. Not that anyone is going to come after you if you send a book set in it off to a print-on-demand company, but you should recognize that you really are supposed to pay for a license to use it.

The same, of course, is true of today’s industry standard, Adobe Garamond. If you intend to pay for a typeface, you might as well go with the Adobe. It’s pretty authentic to the original fonts with just the right bit of modernization.

If you would prefer a free alternative, go for EB Garamond. It is practically identical to Adobe’s version, being based on the same original samples, and may be downloaded free. I would suggest the EB Garamond 12 that was the original version, not the EB Garamond that has recently shown up on Google Fonts; that newer take on the typeface has some changes that may make it better for online use but not so good for print. Not that it couldn’t be used, to be sure. One gives up small caps and old style numerals for more weights—most unneeded—and lining figures.

Before Adobe’s offering came along, perhaps the most authentic Garamond was that from the Stempel foundry—and its many clones. The URW++ version is totally free and open license, having been donated to the Ghostscript project decades ago. I’ve used it for several novels, more than any other typeface, I suspect (and I’m not going to stop and count right now). It looks good, it looks professional. It and the EB are the two top choices for free Garamonds.

Yet I shall mention another: Cormorant or, more precisely, Cormorant Garamond, the latter being a slightly altered version to make it a little more suited to body text. Incidentally, I would recommend the ‘book’ weight, not the regular, which looks a bit spindly. Cormorant, on the whole, veers closer to that American style of Garamond mentioned earlier. It is actually a quite attractive typeface, but perhaps not as readable for long stretches of text.

I shall also mention a couple free Garamond-adjacent typefaces, both of which tend toward the Granjon style (Granjon being one of Garamond’s assistants and successors). Excellent commercial fonts have been created in that Granjon mode, notably Plantin and Matthew Carter’s Galliard.

Plantin is a solid, workmanlike face that has been dependable for book text for a century. A pretty good replacement for it is Crimson. Do make sure you get the latest iteration of the design, Crimson Pro. It has finally made it to the totally professional level with this version. Crimson is one of those typefaces I could see using for pretty much anything but it may not have quite the sense of elegance one gets from Adobe or EB Garamond.

Alegreya is elegant, and makes a decent alternative to Galliard. It seems definitely inspired by Carter’s design; not a clone by any means but very much with the same light-hearted and adventurous feel. This is particularly evident in the italics. I do love Galliard but I think Alegreya may just replace it.

I mentioned the added weights in the newest version of EB Garamond. I find all those bolds and blacks and so on largely pointless, and generally not all that attractive (and bold italics can be an abomination). Good italics are more important—essential even—than a variety of weights, and I really prefer to have small caps available too. EB Garamond 12, Cormorant, and Alegreya do all include small caps.

Alegreya and Cormorant also have another point in their favor, and that is a matching sans typeface. I’ll readily admit I like Ysabeau, the sans companion to Cormorant, more than Cormorant itself. It and Alegreya Sans can both be useful for titling in a book set in any flavor of Garamond.

So, we have no excuse for not using Garamond in our next novel. Unless, of course, we prefer Caslon. I’ll have to talk about that some other time.

 

Licensed

For the typefaces used in the interior of our Arachis Press books, we are scrupulous about using only fonts for which we have a license. This means—in our case—the Bitstream typefaces licensed via our software and an assortment of ‘free’ fonts. There are free faces that are quite satisfactory and entirely professional; we have mentioned before the free pack donated by URW++ to the Ghostscript project and that one could do a perfectly good job with nothing else.

But then there are covers. If one converts ones cover file to a graphic (as we do—we upload high definition PNGs to our printer), one can get away with using unlicensed fonts. It is when we embed those typefaces in PDFs (or other file formats) that we run into legal questions.

Now we’ll admit that a small publisher (or self-publisher) probably won’t be called out for this but it is best to be safe. And legal! Therefor, we do keep a number of fonts on hand (or on computer, we should say) that we would not use for interior layout but can be handy for cover design. These are, of course, primarily ‘display’ fonts that one might not use for interior text anyway.

The self-publisher who uses Canva (or a similar cover generator) needn’t worry about any of that. Any licensing is taken care of already. Similarly, ebooks (other than PDFs) should not be problematic; we simply specify ‘serif’ for the type in our EPUBs and allow the reader to choose the font they prefer.

Incidentally, we should mention that Microsoft’s fonts are not free to use in your books, even if they are included in your copy of Windows. And Times New Roman should not be used in a commercial release without paying for it—though we don’t know why anyone would want to.

So we have used Dutch 766, Bitstream’s copy of Imprint, in our books but we would not use the Imprint MT Shadow that came with Windows. Not as part of the interior text. On a cover? Maybe someday, if it is needed.

More on Free Fonts

Having said some words on free fonts for publishing (in the previous post), I thought I’d, ah, say some more words. Specifically, I’d mention a few popular choices that have become widely available. Why not in alphabetic order?

Alegreya is a lovely serif typeface that seems a little too ornate for the typical fiction book. I would not however, hesitate to use it for poetry—and have. Moreover, it pairs beautifully with the sans version, also free. Alegreya Sans for headings, Alegreya for body, is a combo that works great.

Century Schoolbook is one of the fonts included in the URW++ Ghostscript package I mentioned before. CS is always a good, workmanlike, and highly legible typeface. After all, it is widely specified for legal documents. For a novel? It would certainly work but might look a little old-fashioned, stodgy even, to some readers. For children’s books, as well as nonfiction, it remains a good choice.

Cormorant is a variant on the ever-popular Garamond style of typefaces, but one a little too quirky for long stretches of text. It lacks the readability for that. Great for titles, though (as is the related sans, Ysabeau), and we used it for a book of quotes once.

Crimson I mentioned before and suggested getting the latest version from the designer. It is another Garamond-ish font (or more in the Granjon vein, actually) and has some similarities to the popular Plantin typeface. That’s a good thing. There have been reports of oddities when it is printed so that is something one must watch for (as with any font). Another good workmanlike font with a touch of elegance.*

EB Garamond is pretty much the cream of the free Garamonds (although we mostly use the URW++ Garamond No.8) and practically identical to the widely used Adobe Garamond. As both are based on the same original type samples, this is not unexpected. Some might claim it is not quite as refined as the Adobe offering in terms of kerning and such, but it looks every bit as good to us. One could certainly use this typeface exclusively for text and forget the rest.

Gentium has been around a long time and is thoroughly tried and tested. It looks pretty good, too, less stodgy than many popular choices but not overdone. It does suffer somewhat from the same problem as Times New Roman; that is, it can look too closely packed in long lines. We’ve used it for poetry and it works there. It would not be a bad choice for a magazine, used in narrower columns.

The same is largely true of Linux Libertine, another font that has been around a while.

PT Serif was designed for the Russian government. It has more than a passing resemblance to Microsoft’s Constantia, probably the best of those ‘Clear Type’ fonts they brought out as a package some time back. Of course, any and all those Microsoft fonts included for ‘free’ with Windows are off-limits for publishing, but PT is a quite adequate and usable typeface.

Which brings us at last to the very popular Volkorn. As much as I like this font, I’ve never seen it as working that well in a novel. Maybe it could but I’d be more likely to use it for nonfiction. It is a solid, readable font—almost too solid.

***

Some others I might mention: Fanwood, which is based on a ‘standard’ typeface for fiction, Fairfield. The same designer, Barry Schwarz, has also crafted OFL Sorts Mill Goudy, based on Goudy Old Style. Both certainly look good but are perhaps not quite as time-tested and refined as some other offerings. Schwarz has some other Goudy-based offerings too; one might or might not find them useful.

Libre Baskerville and Libre Caslon are both projects that might not be completely perfected but might provide what one needs for a self-published project—especially if one wants that classic look such fonts provide.

Literata is a Google font originally designed for use in e-readers but one needn’t limit it to that. There is a version for print, in a large variety of weights. I’ll note that it looks somewhat like Adobe’s Minion.

Lora is also available from Google and is, again, intended more as a screen font than a print one, but doesn’t look bad on a page.

All these typefaces may be found readily enough online. Search the names. Perhaps I’ll write a post on a few of the commercial fonts we like and use, down the line, but this is enough for now.

*An addendum: There is now a Crimson Pro that is an even better choice, and available in a number of weights. If you wish to try out Crimson, this is the way to go (and it may be downloaded from Google Fonts).

Free Fonts for Publishing

Allow me to make clear before proceeding that I intend to discuss typefaces for the interior text of books. Display fonts for covers are another subject. One can get away with type there that would be entirely unsuitable for text.

So—free. You may have been warned about low quality ‘junk’ fonts. This is not as much the problem as it was in the early days of desktop publishing. There are many quite good and quite free typefaces out there. We use some ourselves at Arachis Press. Let me begin with a familiar name: Adobe.

Back in the early days of personal computers Adobe developed a rather nice typeface named Utopia. This is a slightly simplified (for the low resolution printers of the time) take on something similar to Baskerville. Utopia was intended as a sort of Times New Roman killer, a font suitable to all-around office use. It didn’t displace TNR but it proved to be a quite nice font that eventually was made free. One may see quality novels and nonfiction from the big publishing houses printed in Utopia. Though they undoubtedly use the paid version, the free font is completely acceptable.

More recently, Adobe released their free Source Serif. This typeface has roots in the 18^th Century Fournier designs and looks quite professional on the page. Not as ‘formal’ as Utopia—use whichever suits the mood of your book. One could probably get by with just those two fonts. There is also a free Source Sans; less useful as text but one could employ it effectively for chapter titles and such.

Which brings us to Charter. This is also an older design from Matthew Carter and created for much the same purposes as Utopia. Moreover, it is based on the same original typeface as Source Serif; there are differences, to be sure, but they are very similar. Which one is preferable is entirely a matter of personal taste. Charter also has a free version (more than one, actually). When I say free, I mean completely so: no cost and free to use however one wishes.

I could mention the widely available Deja Vu (aka Vera) fonts here also. They too were crafted in the early days of computers for much the same reasons as Utopia and Charter. Honestly, I do not think highly of the way they look on a printed page. Not that there is anything wrong with them; they are simply not very attractive to my eye.

There are loads of other acceptable free typefaces out there and I am not going to list them. There is all the stuff from Google Fonts, of course. Some are adequate, but be warned many are better suited to screens than printed pages. Some are not the latest and best versions, also—Crimson, which can be a pretty decent text typeface, is best downloaded from its designer, not Google. Be warned too that some of these typefaces can become problematic when sent off to a printer, with characters not printing properly and so on. Still many free fonts one may find are well designed and look good; just be sure to give any print proofs a very thorough going over!

I must mention the URW++ free package. These were the fonts donated to the Ghostscript project way back and include quite usable and professional typefaces. In particular, the Garamond No.8 and Palladio, which are our ‘default’ choices for, respectively, novels and poetry. Palladio is a variant on Palatino, and designed for URW by Zapf himself. Garamond No.8 is essentially Stempel Garamond. There are several other good fonts included. One can find the packet for download online. They may be ‘old’ designs but they hold up.

Now we at AP do not use just free fonts. We have a license for a package of Bitstream typefaces and those are every bit as likely to show up. But we could get by on free, if need be, and so could anyone else out there wishing to publish on their own. I would suggest starting with time-tested fonts like Charter and Utopia, and the URW++ package, and taking it from there.