Garamond
This font was initially crafted by the French publisher Claude Garamond in the 1540's, it's an old style font as it contains characteristics such as fine proportions and a difference between upstroke and downstroke- making it rather a humanist font. However humanist fonts are made up into several categories, one of them being Garalde which belongs to Claude Garamond. Humanist font's were created to replace the fonts which were used around this time (blackletter). I have chosen Garamond to further research and analyse because I am interested in history and more traditional serif font's as I find more elegant, structured fonts to be appealing aesthetically.
Blackletter fonts were used for its beauty (form) rather than readability (function). Humanist fonts were created to made texts readable and easier to understand, to communicate clearer messages through function rather than form. Garamond however still contains beautifully crafted serif's and is also incredibly readable, making it an old style font which is still used vastly. In this element of form versus function; Beatrice Warde "The Crystal Goblet) 1930 states 'this particular job was not "How should it look?" but "What must it do?"' this is a clear description of how typical modernist fonts work, however old style and blackletter fonts were before this time, even though Claude Garamond was considering along with other creators of humanist fonts the idea of readability rather than their form first.
"Because of the soundness of Garamond's designs his typefaces have historical staying power, and they are likely to remain the day-to-day tools of professional typographers, as long as wertern civilization survives. Reading a well set Garamond text page is almost effortless, a fact that has been well known to book designers for over 450 years."
http://www.pointlessart.com/education/loyalist/typeTalk/garamond/biography.html
As Claude Garamond was a publisher his reasoning for creating this font and his work was to make texts readable. In Beatrice Warde's "The Crystal Goblet" 1930, she explains the difference between form and function in a charming and elegant manner; she states 'The most important thing about printing is that is conveys thought, ideas, images, from one mind to other minds'. Garamond's work was much like this as he wanted clarity in his designs as well as large page margins, a quality composition, excellent paper and printing and superb binding. Garamond's work contains that of form and function as it is a readable font however it does still contain an element of elegance and beauty through its serif's and line weight.
Garamond is known for being one of the most readable and legible typefaces used within print as I have seen it used in many books and novels I have personally read. On a blog named 'thebookdesigner' I found that Garamond is one of the most used and loved typefaces for printing: "The one used most frequently now is the version designed by Robert Slimbach for Adobe. It’s known for its graceful, flowing style and humanistic elegance."
http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2009/08/5-favorite-fonts/
Garamond is mostly used within print for books and therefore fulfils Beatrice Warde's ideas, "Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas" many books such as the Hunger Games Trilogy and Harry Potter use Garamond as their chosen typeface and therefore show that this font is still widely used now.
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