DataLife Engine - Softnews Media Group

In the early 1960s, the German masterprinters’ association requested that a new typeface be designed and produced in identical form on both Linotype and Monotype machines so that text and technical composition would match. Walter Cunz at Stempel responded by commissioning Jan Tschichold to design the most faithful version of Claude Garamond’s serene and classical roman yet to be cut. The boldface and particularly the italic are limited by the twin requirements of Linotype and Monotype hot metal machines. Bitstream’s Cursive is a return to the form of one of Garamond’s late italics, recently identified. Punches and matrices for the romans survive at the Plantin-Moretus Museum. The name refers to Jacques Sabon, who introduced Garamond’s romans to Frankfurt, although the typefaces that Sabon himself cut towards the end of the sixteenth century have a faintly awkward style of their own.