Why are you seeing this wrong?
September 8th, 2010- or a comparison of New Baskerville and Times New Roman
The majority of you, right now, are seeing this wrong. The reason? You probably don’t have the New Baskerville font installed on your computer. That is what I designed this website (and all of my branded materials) with, unfortunately you are probably seeing the inferior Times New Roman. The poor circumstance is a result of the majority of the web is still only able to see a handful of typefaces. The major reason is that unless you are a designer, you probably don’t have any fonts installed beyond what came with your computer. For those that do have extended fonts installed, designers can put a font hierarchy (@font_face) into their CSS code. This basically means that if you have any of the fonts installed that are in the list, it will show the highest listed font you have in your browser. So if you have ITC New Baskerville Std installed, it will show that as the best possible choice. If you don’t have that it will go through the list until it gets to one you have, for most it will be Times or Times New Roman. There are other ways to get around this by embedding javascript and other things that may or may not break the licensing of the font, but this isn’t actually what this post is supposed to be about.
What I really wanted to talk about was the difference of what you (probably) see and what I intend for you to see. (i.e. the difference between New Baskerville and Times New Roman.)
Here below I have a direct comparison of the uppercase letters and numbers of New Baskerville (red) and Times New Roman over the top of it (Cyan at 40% opacity). Click the image for the full size (1900×1200).
You can see that though they are quite similar (which is exactly why I chose it as a subordinate choice for the visual font) there are significant differences and this doesn’t even take into account the lowercase letters as was glimpsed in my header image.
Quick History of the Two Fonts
First, a little about each font. Baskerville was originally designed by John Baskerville in 1757. It is considered a Transitional typeface as it has a more vertical axis and greater contrast between the thicks and thins compared to an Old Style font such as Garamond. This was due to advances in printing technology and better papers that could take finer lines. The version that I use is a new design closely based on the original.
Times New Roman was designed by Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent for the British newspaper The Times in 1932. It was created to increase the quality of the typography in the newspaper and had a strong sense of economy of space. Meaning it was specifically made so they could print more in their paper in less space.
The Differences
Remember that New Baskerville is in red and Times New Roman is in cyan.
New Baskerville leans more toward a humanist font. What that means is that it is much rounder and has a curving serif and base/cap height. Times New Roman (TNR) in comparison is more modern with serifs that are much straighter, almost machine made. The serifs and thins are also much more narrow. A serif is the name for the little feet at the bottom and top of a letter. The bracket (or curve of the serif) is also much more gradual on New Baskerville (NB). You can see what I mean in this detail:
The Q has an obvious difference in the tail, or the bit that hangs down, as well. The NB has a fancier, more calligraphic, tail compared to the modern tail of the Times New Roman Q. The axis, or angle of weight, is also noticeable here. Demonstrated by the gray line, for TNR, it is perfectly vertical whereas on NB it has a slight slant to it.
One more example is the differences in the Es. Besides the slightly curving base and top for NB, but you will also notice that the TNR E has a very sharp connection where the horizontal meets the vertical. This is in contrast to the softly curving transitions for New Baskerville. TNR also has much taller terminations, or the ends of horizontal lines that make it an E.
And that means…
So what does all of this actually mean, and why did I choose New Baskerville over Times New Roman? One of the biggest reasons is that NB is an older typeface that I connect closer with the Arts than the slightly more sterile look of TNR. Since my branding is that I do work with a lean to the fine arts, I had a careful selection that would give as much emphasis to the arts as possible. I also think that NB is a more pleasing typeface and actually more legible.
If it comes down to it, such as on the web, TNR will suffice, but I always prefer New Baskerville. I may, in the future, be able to display NB to anyone that visits the site, regardless of their installed fonts and I am currently looking into it, but it may be a while yet for standardization across the web to come to fruition.
Hopefully you learned a bit about typefaces and the thought that goes into both their creation and selection. I am a pretty big fan of typefaces (just ask my wife!) and plan on talking about them more in the future. If you have anything to add or any comment please write it below!
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© This article is copyright of Chris Lane Photo and should not be found elsewhere.
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