Is Bold Italic Not Cost Effective Anymore?

Dan C. Rinnert

Since I became a font junkie in the early 90s, it seemed to me that a typical font family consisted of Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic.  Those were the basic four.

Later, variations like Light, Light Italic, Heavy, Heavy Italic, Condensed, Condensed Bold, Condensed Italic, Condensed Bold Italic, Heavy Condensed, Heavy Condensed Italic, Extended, Extended Bold, Extended Italic, Extended Bold Italic, Heavy Extended and so on, Small Caps, Medium, Medium Italic and so on, Extra Bold, Extra Bold Italic, Semibold and so on, Demi and so on and so on came about.  All that's missing is Hemi, though I'm sure someone at some point will start making that variant too.

Lately, when looking for fonts, I'm seeing a number of fonts that have Regular, Bold and Italic versions but no Bold Italic. Some even have Light, Small Caps, ligatures, alternates and even fractions, but still no Bold Italic.

Has Bold Italic fallen to the wayside?  Is there just too little demand for it?  Is there more demand for a fractions version of a font than a Bold Italic?

I'm curious as to why a growing number of font families seem to be omitting Bold Italic.  I'm guessing it must be a business decision (not cost-effective?) but it's hard to fathom that there would be more users clamoring for fractions than bold italic.

Chris Lozos

Are you looking at text or display faces? I don't think bold italic has gone out of favor in complete text families.  If anything, the large family faces include for weights now than ever.  There are cases in display fonts where a designer may presume such a small market for bold italic to not bother with it for a clearly display-only font.

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Chris Lozos

Yes, James, but if a client needs it, they need it ;-)  Also, some purchase decisions are made on completeness and future use.  These would be for more active users.  For instance, a scrapbooker probably won't care an iota but a corporate client might.

Dan C. Rinnert

Text faces.  For display faces, I generally only expect one font in the "family."  If a display face has bold, italic and bold italic versions, that's a bonus.  For a display face, a Regular and an Italic version is handy because if you need to use a book title in a headline, it's nice to be able to italicize the title.

But for text faces, regular, bold, italic and bold italic are the bare essentials.  Maybe it's just me, but over the past week or so while looking for text faces, I keep coming across really nice ones from different foundries that all lack a bold italic.

Roel Nieskens

I think I heard someone say at TYPO Berlin that bold italic got so popular because early WYSIWYG editors had a button for bold and a button for italic. You could turn them on individually and thus a demand was created for bold italic. Not because of typographic desires, but because of primitive UIs.

Whether this is true or internet folklore, I do not know...

SiDaniels

You can skip Bold Italic if...

a) your customers are conscious enough not to apply fake italic to the bold weight.
b) your customers are sophisticated enough to not use bold italic at all.
c) you don't care about your type being mangled in this way by unconscious/unsophisticated customers.

Kent Lew

I have a mixed relationship with Bold Italic.

As a text-face type designer, I loathe doing the Bold Italic — like James said, lots more work for little additional usefulness.

However, as a book designer and typographer, when I need it, I need it; and it’s a nuisance not to have it when I need it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve run through a supposedly final manuscript, spec’ed it up, met with the project editor to confirm typographic requirements, and determined no need for bold italic — only to later have a book title or similar minor italic change introduced within a bold element at the eleventh hour. Might be only five freakin’ letters! But if I wasn’t planning for it with my font choices, we’re screwed.

So annoying. But I get it.

Marc Oxborrow

For modern publication design, a full complement of italics is required. Check out a page of Wired or GQ, with its riot of sidebars and factoids, and count the number of different weights used for text. These varied copy blocks need italics for publication names, foreign words/phrases, etc.

Nick Shinn

I have only omitted Bold Italic once, out of all the faces that I’ve made which include a Bold.

However, I have omitted Thin Italic and Black Italic in several typefaces, with those weights in roman.

And I have also omitted “Expert” features (small caps, superior and inferior figures, etc.) in the extreme weights, in many typefaces.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

https://twitter.com/hhpapazian/status/621040103520014336 

:-)
Of course an instance does not a justification make. But to me the shunning of Bold-Italic has always seemed a bit precious. Too much effort for too little use? Well then what about smallcaps? :-/

Bold is a feature that can be applied to text. Italic is a feature that can be applied to text. What's the rationale of those two being mutually exclusive?

Alex Michael

I'm in the middle of rereading Bringhurst now (something probably worth doing every few years, for life), and one of my favorite insights from the book is the history of italics. I think he does good job balancing historical precedent (usually driven by practical limitations) without totally dismissing the validity of the possibilities afforded by modern tools (usually characterized by a total lack of practical limitations).

But history is just that, and typography's modern incarnation brings with it certain features that don't just expand our capabilities as typesetters, but totally change our psychology. For better or worse, text formatting is seen by many today as the intersection of abstract states; bold and italic are two totally independent "bits" that can be toggled between zero and one at will, and the resulting "truth table" of 00, 01, 10 and 11, must be transparently handled by the typeface in order to suggest that those parameters really are independent.

The reality, of course, is that under the hood, a glyph has either been drawn or it hasn't, and no amount of digital rationale will make that hypothetical bold+italic+small caps+swash+whatever variant available if someone didn't take the time to craft it. But that's not the reality modern tools present.

I agree that it's probably an enormous (and virtually thankless) burden to have to cater to the deep end of that feature space, which is by definition the statistically least likely to be used, but the fact that this entire space is being mapped out and implemented is what makes modern developments of an ancient practice possible in the first place.

Just some thoughts on the matter. Bear in mind that all of my conviction on the above matters are going to evaporate the moment I have to draw a bold italic.

Ray Larabie

I skipped a bold-italic 14 years ago and I regret it. I'm worried if I try to add it now, it'll end up like those old Times New Roman family additions that didn't match.

Chris Lozos

I am reading this thread in the middle of drawing bold italic, semibold italic, medium italic, extra bold italic, and black italic.  Now that I have done most of the work, there is no way I am leaving them out ;-)