Souvenir 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 in 1914 by

Morris Fuller Benton Morris Fuller Benton (November 30, 1872 – June 30, 1948) was an American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders (ATF), for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937. Many of Benton' ...

for

American Type Founders American Type Founders (ATF) Co. was a business trust created in 1892 by the merger of 23 type foundries, representing about 85% of all type manufactured in the United States. De Vinne, Theodore Low, ''The Practice of Typography,'' Century Comp ...

. It was loosely based on ''Schelter-Antiqua'' and ''Schelter-Kursiv,'' a 1905

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Moder ...

type issued by the J.G. Schelter & Giesecke foundry in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

. It has a much softer appearance than other old style faces, with a generally light look, rounded serifs, and very little contrast between thick and thin strokes. Like Cheltenham, it shows the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement without belonging to a specific historical style. A 1970s redesign by

Ed Benguiat Ephram Edward Benguiat (; October 27, 1927October 15, 2020) was an American type designer and lettering artist. He designed over 600 typefaces, including Tiffany, Bookman, Panache, Souvenir, Edwardian Script, and the eponymous Benguiat and Bengu ...

, adding extra styles and an italic, became far more popular than the initial release, and is the source of most versions sold today. At the time of its issue it achieved only a moderate popularity but was known as "the printer's friend" because of its forgiving qualities on press. In the 1970s, because of its friendly, curving structure, it became very popular in uses such as in body text of educational material and for headings in book printing. Historians have described it as 'laid-back', 'the friendliest of Benton's designs' and as 'like

Times 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 wit ...

dipped in chocolate'.

Cold type copies

In 1967

licensed the design from ATF and re-drew the face for

Photo-Lettering Inc. Dr. Edward Rondthaler (June 9, 1905 – August 19, 2009) was a typographer as well as a simplified spelling champion and chairman of the American Literacy Council. He was critical to the development of SoundSpel. He was born in Bethlehem, P ...

When the

International Typeface Corporation The International Typeface Corporation (ITC) was a type manufacturer founded in New York in 1970 by Aaron Burns, Herb Lubalin and Edward Rondthaler. The company was one of the world's first type foundries to have no history in the production of ...

(ITC) was formed in 1971 it not only issued this design as ''ITC Souvenir'' but hired Benguiat to draw additional weights. He even added swashes for each variant, thus increasing its attractiveness. It was the bold and demi-bold weights that subsequently achieved a ubiquitous popularity, leading to it being made available for photocomposition by all the leading producers under the name ''Souvenir'' by Alphatype,

Berthold Berthold or Berchtold is a Germanic given name and surname. It is derived from two elements, ''berht'' meaning "bright" and ''wald'' meaning "(to) rule". It may refer to: *Bertholdt Hoover, a fictional character in the anime/manga series '' Attack ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

, Star/Photon, Mergenthaler,

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 i ...

, Varityper, while it was called ''Sovran'' by

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 ...

Hot metal copies

The sudden popularity of this face in the 1970s led to the creation of Linotype matrices in two weights by Matrotype. This is perhaps the only time when a phototype was subsequently cut into metal.

Digital copies

Because of cross-licensing agreements, the original digitisation is sold by a variety of companies. Digital copies are widely available from Linotype,

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 many other vendors. The company

URW++ URW Type Foundry GmbH (formerly URW++ Design & Development GmbH) is a type foundry based in Hamburg, Germany. The foundry has its own library with more than 500 font families. The company specializes in customized corporate typefaces and the d ...

created a matching sans-serif design to complement it.

Reputation

Due to its enormous popularity in the 1970s, Souvenir has become associated with the design of that era. This inevitably led to a backlash commencing in the 1980s and 1990s.

Simon Garfield Simon Frank Garfield (born 19 March 1960) is a British journalist and non-fiction author. Biography Garfield was born in London in 1960.The 8 Worst Fonts In The World
, October 28, 2011, excerpt from book The backlash can be compared to that against

Comic Sans Comic Sans MS is a sans-serif typeface designed by Vincent Connare and released in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation. It is a non-connecting script inspired by comic book lettering, intended for use in cartoon speech bubbles, as well as in other c ...

some decades later, another typeface intended to seem casual and friendly that came to be seen as overused in inappropriate circumstances.

References

{{Reflist

External links

MyFontsSouvenir - by Linotype Design Studio
American Type Founders typefaces Letterpress typefaces Photocomposition typefaces Digital typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1914 Art Nouveau typefaces Typefaces designed by Morris Fuller Benton Typefaces designed by Ed Benguiat International Typeface Corporation typefaces