Reviving Caslon

By William BerksonPart 1: the snare of authenticityHow much should a revival of a typeface look like the original? Well, just as with performing an old song—an analogy Matthew Carter has made—there is something you have to like in the original in order want to revive it. And you can’t depart from the original too much, or you lose the charm of the old song that appealed to you in the first place. But if it is too much like the old versions, it might be stale and dated, irrelevant. So what do you keep and what do you change? And change in what way? That’s the challenge every revivalist faces. In the process of working on my own revival of Caslon—Williams Caslon—I came to two conclusions about revivals generally. First, the pursuit of authenticity is a snare and a trap. Don’t go there. Second, particularly if it’s an old typeface, it’s going to be harder than you imagined, and you can lose your way in the process. So you’d better start with a very clear goal for your revival, and stick to it.Here’s the experience that led me to those conclusions.It all started with an argument with the usual suspects at Typophile.com over the merits of Caslon—or lack of them. At one point type designer John Hudson wrote, “Sadly, Adobe Caslon is the only version that is suited to a wide range of typographic application, but it doesn’t look like Caslon, so what’s the point?”At this point, a little bell went off in my head. I remembered reading Einstein’s ‘Autobiographical Notes’ back in my student days, and of course had to ID the typeface—fortunately, on “i love typography” I don’t have to explain why! The typeface was Mergenthaler Linotype Caslon Old Face, 12 point. And it always stuck in my head as having a distinct charm and readability that I n

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