Fournier: A Specimen of a Classic Old Face
A small launch booklet for Monotype's revival of a typeface first cut in Paris around 1750 by Pierre Simon Fournier.
What it is
A small launch booklet for Monotype's revival of a typeface first cut in Paris around 1750 by Pierre Simon Fournier. A one-paragraph preface does all the selling: it gives the pedigree, sends readers to Paul Beaujon's essay in the Monotype Recorder of July 1926 for the history, says the face was recut to be condensed without losing beauty, and states that its matrices come only with the Monotype composing machine. A contents page doubles as a size key. The specimen then sets five real passages at falling sizes, from 18 point down to 10: Bernard Shaw on morals, Virginia Woolf on Elizabethan drama, two short pieces by Logan Pearsall Smith, George Santayana on self-consciousness and William Hazlitt on common sense. It closes with full character showings at each size, with small capitals, ligatures and figures, and a page of fleuron ornaments with catalogue numbers.
Why read it now
The method holds: the face is sold as pages of reading, not as a row of letters. A printer judges colour, fit and space saving by reading Woolf at 14 point, and the named authors lend the type some of their standing. The preface is a positioning line that answers two objections at once: condensed but not plain, classical but not archaic. Research on processing fluency (Reber and Schwarz, 1999; Song and Schwarz, 2008) backs the premise that how easily text reads shapes how readers judge what it says, so testing type at reading size is sound practice. What has dated is the lock-in: matrices for one hot-metal machine turned a typeface into a reason to buy the whole system, a tactic that now lives in software ecosystems rather than foundries. The pedigree appeal also assumes a buyer who knew who Fournier was. To use it: when a client picks a brand font, Arabic or Latin, show the candidates setting the client's own copy at the sizes it will run, and write one sentence that names the main objection and answers it.
Passages worth keeping
This face was re-cut in order to fulfil a demand for a letter which, while being condensed, should not lack beauty and though modern in feeling should retain the graces of the old styles.
أعيد نحت الحرف ليلبي طلبًا على حرف ضيق العرض لا يفقد جماله، ويبدو حديثًا مع احتفاظه بلمسات الطرز القديمة.
The matrices for this revived Fournier type are available only with the "Monotype" Composing Machine.
لا يمكن الحصول على هذا الحرف إلا مع آلة الجمع من مونوتايب، فشراء الخط يقود إلى شراء الآلة.
The Lanston Monotype Corporation desire, therefore, to direct the attention of printers and publishers, who wish to employ a style which though classical is not archaic, to the following pages.
تدعو الشركة الطابعين والناشرين الذين يريدون أسلوبًا كلاسيكيًا غير عتيق إلى تصفح الصفحات التالية والحكم بأنفسهم.
Is it not that literature, if it is to keep us on the alert through five acts or thirty-two chapters, must somehow be based on Smith, have one toe touching Liverpool, take off into whatever heights it pleases from reality?
الكتابة التي تريد أن تبقي القارئ منتبهًا يجب أن تضع قدمًا واحدة على الأقل في حياته اليومية المألوفة، ثم تحلق كما تشاء.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
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