Victor Lardent (1905–1968) was a British advertising designer and draftsman at ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' in London. He created the typeface

Times New Roman Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration w ...

under the artistic direction of

Stanley Morison Stanley Arthur Morison (6 May 1889 – 11 October 1967) was a British typographer, printing executive and historian of printing. Largely self-educated, he promoted higher standards in printing and an awareness of the best printing and typefaces o ...

in 1931, which is commonly used in

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor, word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other pla ...

Career

Lardent worked as a draftsman in the publicity department of ''The Times'' newspaper. His specialism was creating

lettering Lettering is an umbrella term that covers the art of drawing letters, instead of simply writing them. Lettering is considered an art form, where each letter in a phrase or quote acts as an illustration. Each letter is created with attention to de ...

art for advertisers in ''The Times'' who did not have an advertising agency, and he was talented at drawing in pen and using an airbrush.

Times New Roman

Lardent's most famous project was designing the new typeface for ''The Times'': once released as Times New Roman to the general market, it became one of the most popular typefaces of the twentieth century. Lardent did not have a detailed memory of his work on Times New Roman, although he spoke to

Walter Tracy Walter Valentine Tracy RDI (14 February 1914 – 28 April 1995) was an English type designer, typographer and writer. Biography Walter Tracy was born in Islington, London and attended Shoreditch Secondary school. At the age of fourteen he wa ...

and James Moran about it in the 1960s. The artistic director who commissioned and conceptualised the design was

, an influential writer on printing and artistic adviser to the typesetting machine manufacturer

Monotype Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...

. Morison's biographer Nicolas Barker has described the different accounts of the design process as "puzzling and not a little hard to follow". Morison wrote that he created sketches for the typeface and gave them to Lardent, who created a finished design. Morison said that he chose to employ Lardent because of his ability to produce "an unusually firm and clear line". Morison remembered that he drew sketches of the design he wanted which Lardent expanded into a full type design. Lardent told Moran that he thought he had been shown a photograph of a book printed by sixteenth-century printer

Christophe Plantin Christophe Plantin ( nl, Christoffel Plantijn; – 1 July 1589) was a French Renaissance humanist and book printer and publisher who resided and worked in Antwerp. Life Plantin was born in France, probably in Saint-Avertin, near the city of ...

; according to Moran "he was not sure about the exact book, but Plantin had remained in his mind". Moran felt that it was more likely a 1905 specimen from the

Plantin-Moretus Museum The Plantin-Moretus Museum ( nl, Plantin-Moretusmuseum) is a printing museum in Antwerp, Belgium which focuses on the work of the 16th-century printers Christophe Plantin and Jan Moretus. It is located in their former residence and printing esta ...

, which holds Plantin's surviving materials and other types including the type by

Robert Granjon Robert Granjon (1513-November 16, 1589/March 1590) was a French type designer and printer. He worked in Paris, Lyon, Frankfurt, Antwerp, and Rome for various printers. He is best known for having introduced the typeface Civilité and for his ita ...

that Times New Roman is loosely based on. Both Tracy and Barker endorsed this view, noting that the 'a' on Times New Roman is based on a replacement character added to the type in the 1730s. Lardent's original drawings are according to Rhatigan lost, but photographs exist of his drawings. Rhatigan comments that Lardent's originals show "the spirit of the final type, but not the details." The design was adapted from Lardent's large drawings by the Monotype drawing office team in

Salfords Salfords ) is a village in the borough of Reigate and Banstead in Surrey, England. It lies approximately south of Redhill on the A23 London to Brighton road. The village is within the civil parish of Salfords and Sidlow which covers a popu ...

, Surrey, which worked out spacing and simplified some fine details. James Moran's 1971 book ''Stanley Morison: His Typographic Achievement'' argued that Morison had exaggerated some aspects of his career in later life. He felt that "Morison could sketch a layout but was no draughtsman." Moran wrote that Lardent was embittered until his death at what he perceived to be a lack of proper recognition for his efforts in creating the font, but neither Barker nor Tracy remembered this speaking to him. Lardent worked for Morison again later in his career on art for the book ''Politics and Script''.

References

Cited literature

* * * * * * 1905 births 1968 deaths British designers British typographers and type designers {{design-bio-stub