Granby is a

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...

typeface designed and released by the Stephenson Blake

type foundry A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and ...

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...

in 1930. It is influenced by the Johnston typeface or Railway Alphabet (1916), the proprietary face of what became

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...

, as well as by

Gill Sans Gill Sans is a Sans-serif#Humanist, humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype Imaging, Monotype in 1928. It is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Johnston (typeface), Underground Alphabet", t ...

(1928), which had recently been released and become popular. Roy Millington's history of Stephenson Blake also cites Futura as an influence. Like both Johnston and Gill Sans, Granby has an upper-case influenced by

Roman square capitals Roman square capitals, also called ''capitalis monumentalis'', inscriptional capitals, elegant capitals and ''capitalis quadrata'', are an ancient Roman form of writing, and the basis for modern capital letters. Square capitals are characterized ...

and a lower-case inspired by traditional " old-style" serif letters, making it an example of what is now called the

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...

style of sans-serif fonts. Granby's regular style is a robust design bolder than conventional body text fonts, making it suitable for headings and posters and also for legible text at smaller sizes. Granby resembles Johnston with diamond-shaped dots (

tittle The tittle or superscript dot is the dot on top of lowercase ''i'' and ''j''. In English writing the tittle is a diacritic which only appears as part of these glyphs, but diacritic dots can appear over other letters in various languages. In mos ...

s) on the "i" and "j" and a wide "a". A difference is its "g", a "single-storey" design influenced by handwriting. According to Mike Ashworth of

Transport for London Transport for London (TfL) is a local government body responsible for most of the transport network in London, United Kingdom. TfL is the successor organization of the London Passenger Transport Board, which was established in 1933, and His ...

, London Transport itself made some use of Granby by the 1960s, due to the limited availability of Johnston type. Granby Elephant and Gill Kayo or Ultra Bold styles

Granby Elephant and Gill Kayo or Ultra Bold styles

Several styles of Granby were released to extend the design, including condensed weights, an inlined style and 'Granby Elephant', an ultra-bold design. As with many sans-serifs, rather than a true italic, an

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) *Oblique angle, in geometry * Oblique triangle, in geometry * Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the ...

was offered, in which the letters were slanted but not altered to take on more handwriting influences. While it was never as popular as Gill Sans on the commercial market, Granby nonetheless remained in use with revivals in

phototypesetting Phototypesetting is a method of Typesetting, setting type which uses photography to make columns of Sort (typesetting), type on a scroll of photographic paper. It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publ ...

and

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

versions. A digitisation of some weights is sold by

Elsner+Flake Elsner is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Branko Elsner (1929–2012), Slovenian footballer and manager * David Elsner (born 1992), German ice hockey player * Gisela Elsner (1937–1992), German writer * Hannelore Elsne ...

and Scangraphic; Red Rooster Fonts has also digitised the Elephant style. It was appropriately used in adverts by the London company Granby Cycles in the 1930s. Wayfarer, by Jeremy Tankard, is a loose revival of the condensed style, commissioned by Sheffield City Council as their corporate font based on its local heritage. (It also has some influences of Stephenson Blake's well-known Grotesque series.) Jeremy Mickel's Specter is a loose adaptation with true italic and an inline version drawn by Douglas Hayes. Dieter Hofrichter's Halifax is also in the same style.

References

{{notelist, 30em

External links

Stephenson Blake specimen book
photographed by Romesh Naik
Granby Inline

Granby Shadow

Example use
on Fonts in Use Humanist sans-serif typefaces Display typefaces Stephenson Blake typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1930