University of California Old Style is a
serif
In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...
typeface designed by
Frederic Goudy
Frederic William Goudy ( ; March 8, 1865 – May 11, 1947) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers ...
and created for the
University of California Press
The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...
from 1936–38.
It is one of Goudy's most popular serif typefaces. It is also known as Berkeley Old Style and Californian.
The University of California is an 'old-style' serif typeface, one inspired by the styles of printing popular before the late eighteenth century. Goudy described it as particularly inspired by the 'Fell Types', a collection of 1670s typefaces used by
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, while other details such as the tilted cross-stroke of the 'e' recall what is now called the 'Venetian' style of typeface design, used by printers such as
Nicolas Jenson
Nicholas (or Nicolas) Jenson (c. 1420–1480) was a French engraver, pioneer, printer and type designer who carried out most of his work in Venice, Italy. Jenson acted as Master of the French Royal Mint at Tours and is credited with being the cr ...
up to the 1490s. Intended for fine book printing, the design has a delicate grace and strokes that alternate between thick and thin. Serifs are fine slabs with minimal bracketing. Goudy provided a set of
swash capitals as alternates for the
italic.
Like many of Goudy's other families, it has been re-released and made generally available after his death, under a variety of (often shorter) names. While no longer the corporate typeface of the University of California Press, it retains a strong popularity in academia and is used as a corporate typeface by several universities.
Creation
Goudy used the font to set his book ''Typologia'' (1940) which was printed by the University of California Press in the new font, and he described his inspiration for it in the chapter ''The Story of a Type''.
He described it as particularly intended to be attractive in mass and said that the italic was intended to be "a refined letter, yet not, I hope, one which may be called prudish…some letters are a bit exuberant. As an italic is ''
ostly used' to emphasize a word…or sometimes merely to give a lighter touch, I have allowed myself to incorporate here and there in my font some forms more or less fanciful." It was finished just before a fire that destroyed Goudy's workshop, engraving machine and plan drawings, and Goudy noted in his book that it was lucky that he had posted off finished work to
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 ...
to use as a basis for making
punches for their
hot metal typesetting
In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mo ...
system, allowing some letters to be redrawn from patterns.
Goudy created the design from a position of great eminence as one of the most popular typeface designers of the first half of the twentieth century, and almost uniquely for type founders of the period as an independent artisan, not employed by any one company and free to pursue his own projects.
However, tastes were changing away from his work even at the time he was commissioned by the University Press.
Contemporary trends in graphic design saw a movement away from Goudy's love of warm, organic and rounded serif fonts, in favor crisper designs, such as sharp geometric sans-serif fonts and harder, more robust serifs such as Monotype's
Times New Roman
Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned for use by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931. It has become one of the most popular typefaces of all time and is installed on most personal computers. The typeface was conceived by Stanl ...
. Of his more than a hundred fonts designed (counting regular or
roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of Roman civilization
*Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...
fonts and italics separately), it would be his last—but two creation of a roman and italic. Goudy had high ambitions for his design, and wrote to California that "I'm trying hard to make it a magnum opus and maybe the effort is preventing more rapid progress – maybe magnum opuses aren't made so consciously."
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 ...
in his book ''Letters of Credit'' was unimpressed with the design, commenting "the design is not particularly notable, but it is pleasant enough to read at 12 point and smaller...in the larger sizes some peculiarities show themselves: C, E, F and T look unfinished, s is too light, and in italic the ball terminals in s look at odds with the other capitals, though they are acceptable in the lowercase s."
Naming
For a name, Goudy preferred 'Berkeley' after the press's
location
In geography, location or place is used to denote a region (point, line, or area) on Earth's surface. The term ''location'' generally implies a higher degree of certainty than ''place'', the latter often indicating an entity with an ambiguous bou ...
, which, he thought more 'aristocratic' than the alternative proposal of 'Californian'. However, Samuel Farquhar, the University Press's manager, requested a name change in order to avoid associating its name with just one of the
university system's campuses.
Both the proposed alternatives would later be used by rereleases.
Public use
After the original type was commissioned for private use, 'California' was released publicly by different companies, first in 1958, by
Lanston Monotype
Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with ...
as 'Californian' and then under the name of 'Berkeley Old Style' by
ITC. Both these versions have been digitized.
Digitizations
In digital versions, ITC released Berkeley Old Style under its pre-existing name.
Digital versions were also issued as 'Californian' by
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 ...
(included with some versions of
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...
and by LTC (in different digitizations) and by Richard Beatty under the name of 'University Old Style'.
Most of these versions added a
bold type
In typography, emphasis is the strengthening of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text, to highlight them. It is the equivalent of prosody stress in speech.
Methods and use
The most common methods in We ...
, which Goudy did not design himself. Font Bureau added a more delicate
optical size
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design.
For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regula ...
for display use.
Academic use
Although no longer the corporate font of the University of California Press or System, Goudy's font remains popular in academic use. As of 2022, it remains a corporate font of the
Iowa State University
Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricult ...
;
it is also used on the
UC Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...
word mark.
References
Citations
Bibliography
* {{cite book, first=Simon, last=Loxley, title=Type: The Secret History of Letters, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9AfP2prmEDUC, date=2006, publisher=I.B.Tauris, isbn=978-1-84511-028-4
Old style serif typefaces
Typefaces designed by Frederic Goudy
Letterpress typefaces
Digital typefaces
University of California Press
Corporate typefaces
International Typeface Corporation typefaces
Monotype typefaces