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Caledonia is a serif
typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands ...
designed by
William Addison Dwiggins William Addison Dwiggins (June 19, 1880 – December 25, 1956), was an American type designer, calligrapher, and book designer. He attained prominence as an illustrator and commercial artist, and he brought to the designing of type and books so ...
in 1938 for the
Mergenthaler Linotype Company The Mergenthaler Linotype Company is a corporation founded in the United States in 1886 to market the Linotype machine (), a system to cast metal type in lines (linecaster) invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. It became the world's leading manufactu ...
and commonly used in book design. As a transitional serif design, one inspired by the
Scotch Roman Scotch Roman is a class of typefaces popular in the early nineteenth century, particularly in the United States and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom. These typefaces were modeled on a design known as Pica No. 2 from the Edinburgh foundry of ...
typefaces of the early nineteenth century, Caledonia has a contrasting design of alternating thick and thin strokes, a design that stresses the vertical axis and sharp, regular serifs on ascenders and descenders. Dwiggins chose the name ''Caledonia'', the Roman name for Scotland, to express the face's basis on
Scotch Roman Scotch Roman is a class of typefaces popular in the early nineteenth century, particularly in the United States and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom. These typefaces were modeled on a design known as Pica No. 2 from the Edinburgh foundry of ...
typefaces. However, though Dwiggins began with the thought of copying the classical Scotch Romans, eventually he drew more inspiration from the Bulmer design of William Martin. The G is open and the R has a curved tail. The t is unbracketed. Italic characters p and q have no foot serif. The character set, as drawn by Dwiggins was wide, including ranging (old style) figures, lining figures, and small capitals in the text and bold weights. A Greek version of the face is available. Historian of printing G. Willem Ovink describes Caledonia as "one of the most crisp and sprightly modern types".


Hot metal type


Machine composition

''Caledonia'' was made initially for machine composition with foundry type only made later, and then only in Germany. The following variants were designed by Dwiggins and released by Linotype: * ''Caledonia + Italic'' (1938) * ''Caledonia Bold + Bold Italic'' (1940) Two versions of the typeface were commercially available: one, with longer descenders (preferred by the designer), was cast on larger type bodies than the nominal point size and required leading, while the other, with shorter descenders, was designed for use at size and could be set solid. The roman (paired with either bold or italic) and bold (paired with bold italic) were available in 6–12 and 14 point; the bold was also available in 16, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30 and 36 point display sizes with short descenders only, and paired with an optional bold italic at 18 and 24 point. Linotype also made 36 point matrices for ''Caledonia Bold Condensed'', but it is doubtful that Dwiggins had anything to do with their design. The face was sold by Linotype in England under the same name, and in Germany as ''Cornelia''.


Foundry type

''Cornelia'', as it was called there, proved so popular in Germany, that the Stempel Foundry cast it as foundry type.


Cold type

''Caledonia's'' popularity as a text face continued right through the cold type era. Linotype offered Caledonia for its Linofilm system, making several modifications to the design, most noticeably an "f" that kerned now that it was no longer limited to the capabilities of the Linotype machine; these modifications have carried over to the digital version. Caledonia roman was also made available in display optical sizes. Phototypesetting also made unauthorized copies easier than ever to produce, and knockoffs from other companies were sold under the following names: * ''Caledonia'' — Monotype (the only authorized copy) * ''Caledo'' — Alphatype * ''Highland'' —
Autologic Eddie Stobart Group is a British multimodal logistics company, with interests in road haulage, rail freight, deep sea and inland waterway transport systems and deep sea port, inland port and rail connected storage facilities, along with transpor ...
,
Dymo Dymo Corporation is an American manufacturing company of handheld label printers and thermal-transfer printing tape as accessory, embossing tape label makers, and other printers such as CD and DVD labelers and durable medical equipment. The c ...
, Star/Photon, Varityper * ''Balmoral'' —
Autologic Eddie Stobart Group is a British multimodal logistics company, with interests in road haulage, rail freight, deep sea and inland waterway transport systems and deep sea port, inland port and rail connected storage facilities, along with transpor ...
, Berthold,
Harris Harris may refer to: Places Canada * Harris, Ontario * Northland Pyrite Mine (also known as Harris Mine) * Harris, Saskatchewan * Rural Municipality of Harris No. 316, Saskatchewan Scotland * Harris, Outer Hebrides (sometimes called the Isle o ...
, Varityper. * ''California'' —
Compugraphic Compugraphic Corporation, commonly called cg, was an American producer of typesetting systems and phototypesetting equipment, based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, just a few miles from where it was founded. This company is distinct from Compugraph ...
* ''CaledonStar'' — Star/Photon * ''Edinburgh'' —
Graphic Systems Inc. Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufactu ...
* ''Laurel'' —
Harris Harris may refer to: Places Canada * Harris, Ontario * Northland Pyrite Mine (also known as Harris Mine) * Harris, Saskatchewan * Rural Municipality of Harris No. 316, Saskatchewan Scotland * Harris, Outer Hebrides (sometimes called the Isle o ...
, MGD Graphic Systems * ''Calderon'' —
Scangraphic Scangraphic is a division of Dr. Böger Duplomat Apparate GmbH & Co.KG, based in Wedel near Hamburg, Germany. It was founded by Bernd Holthusen and Knut Schmiedl. Mannesmann AG acquired Scangraphic in 1989, and the company was renamed Mannesma ...
* ''Gael'' — Information International Inc.


Digital copies

* A digital version, called New Caledonia, was designed by
David Berlow The Font Bureau, Inc. or Font Bureau is a digital type foundry based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The foundry is one of the leading designers of typefaces, specializing in type designs for magazine and newspaper publishers. History ...
and released in PostScript format by
Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for '' mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of ...
and Linotype in 1988. New Caledonia replaced an early digital Caledonia for Linotype's proprietary typesetting systems that, owing to the technical limitations of the time, was apparently infamous for obliterating most of the typeface's defining attributes. It is available in four weights: text, semibold, bold, and black, each with small capitals and both lining and old-style numerals. It is largely a direct tracing of one of the larger optical sizes for photocomposition, with its characteristic kerning lowercase "f", which was not possible on the Linotype machine. New Caledonia uses the longer descenders from the metal Caledonia. *
Bitstream A bitstream (or bit stream), also known as binary sequence, is a sequence of bits. A bytestream is a sequence of bytes. Typically, each byte is an 8-bit quantity, and so the term octet stream is sometimes used interchangeably. An octet may ...
digitized Caledonia as Transitional 511. It features only two weights, regular and bold, with accompanying italics, and has a much smaller character set than the Linotype/Adobe version, lacking both small capitals and old-style figures. The shorter descender lengths from the metal Caledonia are used. * Time Caledonia, a proprietary version for ''Time'' magazine, was designed by
Matthew Carter Matthew Carter (born 1 October 1937) is a British type designer.A Man of Letters
in 1994. It is more robust than other available digital versions, which suffer from the "emaciated" appearance of many early digitizations of existing fonts that make them less suited to running text, but it is not available for commercial licensing.


Derivatives

* Whitman, designed by Kent Lew at
Font Bureau The Font Bureau, Inc. or Font Bureau is a digital type foundry based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The foundry is one of the leading designers of typefaces, specializing in type designs for magazine and newspaper publishers. History ...
and released in 2003, combines the basic structure of Caledonia in the roman with elements of
Eric Gill Arthur Eric Rowton Gill, (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was an English sculptor, letter cutter, typeface designer, and printmaker. Although the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' describes Gill as ″the greatest artist-cra ...
's
Joanna Joanna is a feminine given name deriving from from he, יוֹחָנָה, translit=Yôḥānāh, lit=God is gracious. Variants in English include Joan, Joann, Joanne, and Johanna. Other forms of the name in English are Jan, Jane, Janet, Janic ...
, and has an italic in between the two extremes. Lew would later contribute the hand-lettering for the spine of ''W.A. Dwiggins: A Life in Design'', Bruce Kennett's 2018 Dwiggins biography. * Déréon, designed by Jean François Porchez in 2005 for
Beyoncé Knowles Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Beyoncé's boundary-pushing artistry and vocals have made her the most influential female musician of the 21st century, according to ...
's "House of Déréon" fashion line, is based on Caledonia but incorporates influences from a number of different time periods and type styles, reflecting the eclectic influences on Beyoncé's music. It is not currently commercially available.


References

*Blackwell, Lewis. ''20th Century Type''. Yale University Press: 2004. . *Bringhurst, Robert. ''The Elements of Typographic Style''. Hartley & Marks: 1992. . *Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. ''Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History''. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. . *Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers''. Yale University Press: 2006. .


External links

{{Commons category, Caledonia (typeface)
Essay on Dwiggins' typefaces
Linotype typefaces Transitional serif typefaces Letterpress typefaces Photocomposition typefaces Digital typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1938 Typefaces designed by William Addison Dwiggins