In particular, one variant of Garamond found its way to the pages of a particular edition of a Parisian journal, Remarques critiques sur les œuvres d’Horace, published in 1689 - over 100 years after Claude Garamont's death. Regardless of the precise identity of its creator, Garamond's popularity grew in the early Baroque period and was frequently found gracing the elaborate frontispieces of all varieties of manuscripts published throughout the seventeenth century. The details of the Garamont/Garamond saga are deep, fascinating, and complex, but sadly beyond the purview of this blog post. Garamont's typecutting was primarily in the Roman style (whose more famous members include Times New Roman and Baskerville), and through a heady and centuries-long cacophony of historical accidents, serendipities, and alleged misattributions, his name (rightly or wrongly) came to be associated with one of the style's conquering typefaces and all its many variants. The typeface's namesake, one Claude Garamont, a preeminent designer and publisher of sixteenth-century Paris, found himself placed most conveniently in an era of great innovation and flourishing within his industry. Indeed, the typeface traces its history back to the renaissance. Others, though, maintain that the font has fairly won its pedestal in the pantheon of graphic design with its elegance, legibility, and rich history. Garamond's popularity has (somewhat cynically) been attributed by some to mere market forces, pointing to the typeface's superior ink efficiency when compared to similar fonts. My investigations quickly began to focus upon one of the world's best-known and most widely-used serif typefaces, Garamond - perhaps most familiar to us today as the font used to set the text of the Harry Potter novels, the picture books of Dr Seuss, and the original Google logo. The group's dedication to historical awareness, and their particular interest in Baroque repertoire - comprising music composed generally between the seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries - led me to investigate the typography of the era. It's always an exciting prospect to work with friends on new creative ventures, and I was thrilled to be invited to help HIP Company create an identity that spoke to both contemporary audiences, and the project's historical roots. Written by Nick FitzPatrick, HIP Company’s studio photographer and graphic designer.

Description of garamond typeface