What is the correct term for combining italic lowercase with upright roman caps?

John Butler

Slimbach offered this combination in Poetica IV (now a style set), Carl Dair did it in his Cartier type, revived by Nick Shinn as Dair 1967, Bringhurst does it in Brioso on the cover of The Elements of Typographic Style version 4.3 and also in Arno (and Centaur in a preproduction mockup) on his cover for Iain McGilchrist’s new The Matter With Things.

I know both Aldus and Arrighi did it. Does it have a name?

Florian Hardwig

FWIW, we’ve been calling it italic with roman caps on Fonts In Use, and no-one has suggested a better term so far. Trump’s Delphin is another typeface that references this tradition.

Joshua Langman

Early Renaissance italic? Aldine-style italic?

(The title on the cover of Elements is set in Arno with alternates, not Brioso.)

Cristóbal Henestrosa

Early Renaissance italic? Aldine-style italic?

FWIW, that is how Bringhurst calls them, but I am not sure if he uses those as formal terms, since they are not listed as entries in the index – but he does include “Aldine types”. ¶ The scans are from The Elements of Typographic Style 4.0, pp. 125 and 230.

Florian Hardwig

Karsten Luecke doesn’t use a special term (as far as I know), but he commented on the technical implementation of this feature in his Litteratra – and in CAST’s Rialto, which he handled as well.

Nick Shinn

This cover designed by John Luckhurst in 1978, using Georg Trump’s Delphin, in Letraset Letragraphica, my guess. Upper and lower case on separate sheets, of course.

André G. Isaak

Delphin is an odd choice for that cover. Having driven across Saskatchewan many times, I think something more uniformly boring would have been more appropriate :-)

Christian Thalmann

Does it have a name?

I would suggest «mistake».

Mark Simonson

Another example is ITC Novarese. It's a face I loved back when it was released, but the lack of italic caps put it out of the running whenever I considered using it.

k.l.

I would suggest «mistake».

Teaching Italian amateur printers like Manutius a lesson for sure.

John Butler

Thanks for all your answers, especially Cristóbal. “Aldine italic” it shall be, though it might be awkward to use when applied to Caslon, for example.

As it happens, I just received Bringhurst and Zwicky’s 2018 book Learning to Die, and its body copy is set in something near Centaur/Arrighi or Poliphilus/Blado, yet neither, and also uses Aldine caps. I’ve burned through a dozen possible other candidates from Lutetia to Deepdene, and this appears to be some beautiful new or otherwise obscure Aldine that heretofore escaped my notice and is also not shown or mentioned in his Elements 4.3 which was printed a year after this book. And of course no Note On The Type or mention in the colophon, unusual for Bringhurst.

John Hudson

.

Joshua Langman

I do not have Learning to Die and I can't find an image of the interior online, but the cover appears to be set in Neacademia. Maybe the interior is the same?

Edit: I'm wrong, the cover is set in Adobe Jenson.

John Butler

John Hudson

The roman looks like Bembo to me. I think Bringhurst is messing with you by using Bembo caps with an entirely different italic.

John Butler

Here’s more of the Roman. Edit: perhaps it is indeed Bembo. But I looked everywhere for the italic—I always look for italics in any sample when trying to identify a typeface, because I frankly can’t differentiate romans fast enough.

John Hudson

Yes, roman is definitely Bembo.

The italic is similar to Rialto, which Bringhurst has used in some other books, but not quite.

John Butler

The plot thickens further: the same exact italic shows up in the thumbnail cover preview of this 2015 book from Zwicky, again with Bembo roman going by the W, but when you click on the thumbnail, the preview changes to Rialto. Cosmic forces are conspiring to befuddle me.

Florian Hardwig

That italic looks like Fairbank AKA Bembo 294 Condensed.

John Butler

OK, this is embarrassing. Yes, it’s Fairbank, with the alternate earless bicameral g buried in the Swash font, which I swear I couldn’t find two days ago when looking through Fairbank on Myfonts. Only saw the one weight.

John Hudson

Good catch, Florian. I don’t think I realised that Fairbank is available in digital format.

John Savard

I have learned something from this thread. Aside from not having heard of Fairbank myself until now, this inspired me to do some searching. I learned that as well as there being a Bembo Italic, both Fairbank and Arrighi can be used with it - Arrighi also being used with Centaur.

Now, Centaur, like many other typefaces, is inspired by the work of Nicholas Jenson. When it comes to the type Griffo cut for Aldus - I knew of Bembo, and of Poliphilus, and that was that. I was aware that a typeface with the name of Dante existed, but I had paid it no mind, but now in my recent searches I learned that it was an attempt to produce an improved version of the De Aetna type, even if it never took off in popularity (Monotype appears to have made it only for the Continental market).

John Savard

I have now learned, from here

https://www.printmag.com/paul-shaw/agmena-marks-the-triumphant-return-of-jovica-veljovic-to-the-realm-of-text-typefaces/

that this "narrow category" also includes Minion and Arno Pro... as well as the recent addition of Agmena - by the type designer Veljovic whose name occasionally appeared in MyFonts pangrams.

John Butler

[comment deleted because I absentmindedly responded to the wrong thread]