Surveyor is a Didone serif typeface that recalls type found on engraved maps and charts. It was designed by

Tobias Frere-Jones Tobias Frere-Jones (born Tobias Edgar Mallory Jones; August 28, 1970) is an American type designer who works in New York City. He operates the company Frere-Jones Type and teaches typeface design at the Yale School of Art MFA program. Among his t ...

in 2001 as a custom typeface for use in

Martha Stewart Living ''Martha Stewart Living'' is a magazine and former television program featuring entertaining and lifestyle expert Martha Stewart. Both the magazine and the television program focus on lifestyle content and the domestic arts. Magazine ''Martha S ...

magazine and released publicly in March 2013, in a wider range of styles, by the type foundry Hoefler & Frere-Jones (now known as Hoefler&Co.). Describing it Jonathan Hoefler said, "We had the twin goals of making a typeface that felt very handmade, to evoke the craft philosophy of the magazine, and that could handle all of the charts, tables, recipes, graphs, almanacs and step-by-step instructions that they run in the magazine. We had been waiting to do a typeface based on the distinct style of lettering you find on engraved maps.... A lot of the time, there are things that can be incorporated into the font that are relatively simple – like switching out an alternate character or interpolating a slightly different weight – that are easy for us to do in the process, but can save hundreds of hours in the client's production department." Surveyor has a vertical axis and a high contrast of stroke weight similar to

Bodoni Bodoni is the name given to the serif typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) in the late eighteenth century and frequently revived since. Bodoni's typefaces are classified as Didone or modern. Bodoni followed the ideas ...

or Didot but a less strident, more organic, structure recalling early nineteenth century faces like

Bell A bell is a directly struck idiophone percussion instrument. Most bells have the shape of a hollow cup that when struck vibrates in a single strong strike tone, with its sides forming an efficient resonator. The strike may be made by an inte ...

, Scotch Roman, and Thorowgood. The italics have a slightly more extreme forward slant than is common and curved strokes often terminate in a ball.

Styles

Surveyor's most notable feature is its extremely wide range of weights and styles, designed to provide many options for complex publications such as magazines. The typeface is created in weights from light to black, with italic styles offering designs with or without swashes. Swashes themselves are controlled programmatically so that they only appear where there is space for them, so words that are fully capitalised only have swashes at the start. It is also sold in three different optical sizes, for text printed in different sizes from small to large.

External links

Hoefler&Co. website describing Surveyor's feature list, showing sample settings of text.Article in ''eye'' magazine mentioning the Surveyor typeface

References

{{reflist Hoefler & Frere-Jones typefaces Typefaces designed by Tobias Frere-Jones Modern serif typefaces Digital typefaces Typefaces with optical sizes Typefaces with text figures