Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Brought to you by the letter...


Brought to you by the Letter:
D
Old Standard TT, Regular, lowercase d


Old Standard TT is another typeface available in Google's Font Directory. The lowercase 'd' feels particularly timeless, and I don't think the rest of the typeface translates quite as well. Although, the ascender is a little short in proportion with the x-height, which is uncommon (even disliked?) to see today in contemporary typefaces.

To be honest, I don't have strong feeling about this 'd', I just knew that I liked it when I saw it. Mainly, I thought the top and bottom brackets pointing in different directions was sort of funny. Like the hand gestures for that 80's Dance Like an Egyptian song. But after I checked out some other serif typefaces, I see that that's the norm for lowercase ds. Nevertheless, I stick by the Old Standard TT, lowercase d.

Oh, I will add that I think the typeface works better on the web at larger sizes. The smaller sizes start to have anti-aliasing issues and look a little fuzzy. You can see Old Standard TT at different sizes on the Google Font Directory page. (Better information below!)


Courtesy of Font Squirrel, The Salonnica
(You can download the font from Font Squirrel)

Design Foundry: Paratype (?)
Designer: Alexey Kryukov
Date: 2006-2009
Classification: Modern Serif

Old Standard was very common in the late 19th and and early 20th centuries for Biblical, classical and medieval reproductions. This association makes it a particularly good choice for scientific papers (particularly social and humanitarian sciences) because Old Standard's "specific features are closely associated in the people's eyes with old books they learned on." Old Standard is also a good choice for Greek and Cyrillic works, because Greek and Cyrillic lettertypes were based on the same classicist style. (The classification of "Modern" is based on the style, not the time period.) Old Standard includes over 1,400 glyphs to cover Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters.