: Why is Garamond italic all wonky? The angle of the 'upright' strokes in Garamond italic is different between capitals and lowercase. See, for instance, the discrepancy between the "I" and

@LarsenBagley460

The font's creators wanted historical accuracy over what looks right to us now.

The model for the Garamond installed with Office, Monotype Garamond, is actually the work of Jean Jannon (misattributed to Garamond - long story). You can see a 1928 print of his original in this pdf on page 36, wonky italic capitals and all. nihilistenhymne's answer is not quite right - italic capitals had been introduced long before he started work. Why are his so wonky? I don't know, but my guess is that the idea was that the angles would help letters fit in with lower-case text, and the italic capitals weren't intended to be used in all-caps settings all in one go where the unevenness is obvious. Some italics from the time had less wonky characters - this one from 1571 is a bit more even.

It's not a mistake. Monotype's designers could have cleaned up the design if they'd wanted to - this was the same design team that did Times New Roman, which has very even capitals with constant slant angle in italic - they just wanted to accurately replicate the original.

There can never be one true "Garamond" digital font - it's not 100% clear what fonts Garamond did and didn't cut, those he did cut don't all look the same, and I believe that it's not completely certain that he ever did an italic at all (although he did print with one, so clearly he wasn't averse to them - see Vervliet's books on the topic if you're near a good university library). Basically, "Garamond" is really code for "it's based on French printing between 1530 and about 1620." So any modern "Garamond" font is an interpretation - what are you basing it on, and how much wonkiness are you going to keep? Some versions (Adobe's, Stempel's) go for an italic with regularised capitals, others don't.

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@Murphy569

Because (most) Garamonds follow the tradition. In the 16th century, the time when italic type were evolved, italic fonts weren't created to supplement a typeface but as stand-alone font, used for continuous text. Back in these days they used upright roman capitals for the capitals of the italic type, because they haven't "invented" italic capitals.

Here's a scan from the 1501 edition of Virgil (set by Aldus Manutius, the typecutter was Francesco Griffo). This is probably the first text set in italic type. (Please keep in mind that handwritten italic, called "chancery hand", is much older!)



Sources: Wikipedia: Italic Type; fonts.com: Italics; Indra Kupferschmid – Buchstaben kommen selten allein

Palaeography is very complex and also a bit confusing.

(And it doesn't have anything to do with bad taste, as joojaa suggested!)

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@Dunderdale640

Claude Garamond started designing typefaces in the 1500s, a time when both type design and technology was very different from today. Letters had to be cut into metal by hand, and so they were much more prone to imperfections and unevenness than today's digital type.

Italics, in particular, were based on a different kind of writing, cursive, which was more handwritten and calligraphic.

Lastly,talics for some Garamond typefaces might have been designed by an altogether different designer, Robert Granjon.

These three factors probably combined to produce this "wonky" italic Garamond.

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@Holmes874

There are three possible reasons for why the designer did it.

1: I wonder how it would look if.... Oooo I like it!

This happens a lot in design: someone tries something just to see what it is like, thinks they came up with something cool, and publish it, whether it is actually good design or not. Other people see it and also think it is cool at that is how it spreads. Comic sans did a similar thing among non-designers offering a friendly childish look that some people adored. Good design can be subjective, and in this case a lot of people though that this was a good font.

2: There is a technical reason

In this case I have a hunch there isn't, but unless someone can find it, the only way to know would be to ask the designer. The reason why I think it was reason #1 is that as you mentioned it is distracting and appears to detract and not add from the design.

3: Mistake

As @joojaa pointed out, the designer could have made a mistake. It seems unlikely that they wouldn't have noticed, but you never know.

Why something with "bad" design can spread:


People have bad taste
Bad designs and fonts are often more readily available, Comic sans would have died if it wasn't lurking in every copy of word and power point.

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@Odierno310

There are many differents versions of Garamond font. You have request help for Adobe's version. This version is based on Robert Granjon's design. There are differences between version.

Here you have a little article about this (sorry, but it's in spanish) es.letrag.com/tipografia.php?id=10

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