Garamond: History and Purpose in Design

The Garamond typeface has a long history of being very rich and useful in design. Claude Garamond (1480-1561) was a type designer in his day, and he's credited for creating the Garamond typeface which is in the style of old style serif typefaces. 

Claude was commissioned to create the typeface for a French King by the name of Francis I in the 1540's. The type was originally used in books by Robert Estienne. This new typeface soon influenced type from Western Europe to France. To this day the type face is still used often and there have been many different variations such as Apple Garamond, Adobe Garamond Pro, Granjon, Garamond BE, and ITC Garamond, etc...

Below are examples of some of the different variations:

As you can see, the type is very clean, which is why it is mostly used in designs that need a simple and professional look. There's nothing particularly flashy about the typeface, but it gets the job done. I would consider it to be a very strong font that serves a specific purpose and is extremely useful in various design projects.  

One of the reasons why the typeface is so clean and precise is because of the time period it was created in. Garamond is very much a renaissance creation. It was a humanistic time where perfect proportional relationships were everything. It is easy to see this idea, or relationship, in the Garamond typeface.  This is the main reason behind its clean, sharp look. Also, Garamond replaced the Gothic styled text of the time which was difficult to read. 

- Jason