Sumner Stone- ITC Stone Print

After his work with Adobe as director of typography, in 1989 Stone felt that it was his time to create his own name in design, and open his own studio. Out of his new ideas came the Stone Type Foundry, which was established in Palo Alto, California. As time progressed, Stone began to develop a new typeface. This typeface would come into production in 1991, and was called Stone Print. Stone Print was a condensed roman typeface that was designed for the American graphic design magazine, Print (Carter, 180). Though he has come to design a number of other fonts, the Stone Print family is one of the more well known of his work.

In order to design this typeface family, Stone worked with fellow designer Bob Ishi of Adobe. These two designers had a common goal in mind when coming up with the idea of this typeface family. They wanted to design a typeface that could meet the requirement of low-resolution laser printing. Stone also wanted to create a font in which beginner designers would be able to use, yet as the designs progressed, he realized that this font would also appeal to even the most advanced graphic designers. In efforts of making this font usable for the masses, they had to keep in mind many different things while creating the font.

The Stone family incorporated three different types of fonts. This included a serif, a sans-serif and an informal style. One of the main goals for this font was readability. The Stone Family is not an embellished font. It is very consistent throughout in order to truly have a legible font. All of the Stone print fonts work together, which was another goal of the designers. They thought that if they worked well as a whole, it would give the typeface a more wide range use for applications, including business documents and reports, to books and magazines (faces.com). Stone knew that if the design was based on a common, underlying model, these typefaces would be able to stand alone yet work well as a whole. All of the fonts in the family have the same cap height, the same x-height and the same stem weights throughout.

When looking at a typeface, there are certain formal attributes that you can look at, that allow you to differentiate certain characteristics from other typefaces. Looking at the sans-serif typeface was design by combining the sans serif letterforms yet adding the proportions of the serif design. Stone used other typefaces, such as Gill Sans and Syntax, as influences for the design of this font as well (fonts.com). Unlike the serif typeface, there is a much less obvious contrast in stroke weight, yet it is still evident. The x-height is smaller then that of the serif and the proportions stay more normal throughout. Since this is a sans-serif typeface, the baseline terminal doesn’t have a serif, yet does the ascending terminal is clipped at a right angle. The lowercase “a” is still a double storey letter, unlike the “g” which has become a single storey and the “e” still has a horizontal crossbar. The uppercase “A” has a slightly rounded apex, the “G” is without a spur, the “J” descends below the baseline, the “Q” has a long tail that does not dissect the bowl, and the “R” has a straight leg.

Though Stone has previous ideas for what each typeface should be used for, there is really no limit to what these fonts are applied to. All forms of this family have been seen used in books, reports, restaurant menus, business papers, movie credits, advertising campaigns, and I am sure there will be more to come. This family of typefaces truly offers designers a variety of fonts that have proven to be efficient in various aspects of lettering.

References

Berry, D. John. “Type Tradition in a Digital Age.” Creative Pro. July 2001. February 18, 2009 <http://www.creativepro.com/article/dot-font-type-tradition-a-digital-agez>.

Carter, Sebastian. Twentieth Century Type Designers. Aldershot, Hampshire: Lund Humphries, 2002.

Stone, Sumner. The Art and Use of Typography on the Personal Computer. San Francisco: Bedford Arts, 1991.

“Sumner Stone.” Upper & Lower Case Magazine. 30.1.2 Monotype Imaging. February 18, 2009 <http://www.itcfonts.com/Ulc/3012/SumnerStone.htm>.

Stone Type Foundry Home Page. February 18, 2009 .

http://www.itcfonts.com/Ulc/3012/SumnerStone.htm>.