Old-style Fonts?

Typofactory
Typofactory Posts: 56
in History of Typography
Hello,
I have been trying to find some open source old-style serif fonts, and in doing so I realized the lack of new old-style serif fonts in general. Does anyone know that this isn’t true or if it is why?
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Comments

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,225
    By ‘old-style’, do you specifically mean typefaces in the 15–17th Century renaissance and baroque styles that preceded the neoclassical and romantic types of the 18th Century? Or do you mean in general more traditionally styled serif types, including the latter?

    [Our Castoro typeface is an open source release that is a synthesis of Dutch styles from the 16–18th Centuries, but only in one weight of roman and italic (with a companion set of titling caps). It is also available on Google Fonts.]
  • John Butler
    John Butler Posts: 297
    Start with Peter Baker’s excellent Junicode 2 and Elstob.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,896
    Although oldstyle is not as common as some others, there are a number of open source oldstyle serif faces on Google Fonts, including:

  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,216
    In the first place, serif fonts have fallen from fashion in the WWW era, no doubt because of screen rendering issues prior to Retina resolution (2010), as well as the perception that sans serifs are more appropriate in this tech-y world in which we live. So the return on investment is not promising.

    However, as an eclecticist, as many of us are, I’ve dabbled in a great many type genres, and produced several old-styles:

    Goodchild/Nicholas is a small-x-height Jenson revival.
    Oneleigh is an historicist old-style, in the manner of Goudy.
    Paradigm is a post-modern take on the earliest style of roman type.
    Dair is a revival of a 1967 design in the old style.
    Pratt is a news face in the old style—at least, in the text cuts.
     
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,135
    I hadn't heard of Castoro. It seems to be a beautiful typeface - but I did notice it seems to have one unusual characteristic. Compared to the roman, the italic seems to be bolder than customary.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,225
    I don’t do customary.

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