Figure 1.ITC FRANKLIN DISPLAY
David Berlow
Font Bureau

DESIGN TOOLS
The original designs proved to be only part of the tools necessary to complete the project. “Even though I had the original fonts and experience of the previous Franklin project,” says Berlow, “I still relied on a huge stack of Franklin Gothic specimens. These were always present when I worked on the design. You have to be something of a type hawk to find them, but accurate type specimens provide the details that separate a simple reworking from a new interpretation.” The end result is over 70 fonts of text and display designs developed with legibility and usability as a primary goal. The designs are, in fact, so different from the original ITC Franklin Gothic that they have a new name—simply, ITC Franklin. www.fontbureau.com

A PUBLISHER'S VIEW
Tyndale House Publishers also had a need for a highly legible typeface family, but provided Brian Sooy, of Brian Sooy & Co., with a very different design brief. The publisher of the New Living Translation (NLT) of the Bible was about to print a new edition—but wanted to make some changes in the design and typography. They had many considerations on the design side, but thought that the type issues were relatively simple. “We wanted the type to achieve a better character count,” explains Tim Botts of Tyndale. “We wanted to maintain high levels of legibility and have a strong presence on the page.”

Tyndale had used ITC Giovanni by Robert Slimbach for the previous edition, but the electronic modifications they imposed on the face to meet production criteria weakened its image. Tyndale first approached Slimbach to redesign Giovanni but, when they learned that he would not be able to start on the project for three years, they turned to another type designer.

Brian Sooy & Co. specializes in graphic design and visual communications for higher education, technology, and the healthcare markets. Its principal, however, is also an accomplished typeface designer with over a dozen typefaces to his credit. “There’s something about letterforms that are totally captivating for me,” Sooy says. “It’s probably attributable to my exposure to a Speedball lettering book, a box of Speedball nibs, and a bottle of ink at the impressionable age of 12.

“We started with the idea of working with the semibold weights of my typeface Veritas,” he recalls. “The plan was to modify this design to meet Tyndale’s needs.” Veritas was sufficiently condensed to meet the project brief but the hairlines and serifs were not as pronounced as the publisher wanted. After considering an adaptation of Veritas, it was jointly decided that a completely new design would best serve Tyndale. The result was Lucerna, a typeface designed specifically for the NLT Bible.

DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
“The aging population was also a factor in developing Lucerna,” says Sooy, “and the need for a heavier font to aid legibility.” The individual character widths and how the characters would fit together in words in narrow columns (typical of many Bibles) were also taken into consideration. Because Lucerna would be set small in many instances, Sooy designed the lowercase around a large xheight to ensure high levels of legibility. In addition, the “horizontality” of the lowercase letters at the x-height was emphasized to aid the reader’s eyes traveling along that line. “Essentially I tried to distill the letterforms to their essence,” says Sooy, “and still give the design some distinctiveness.”

He found that the length of time the project took was the biggest hurdle to the design process. Sooy recommended—pleaded— to be given the opportunity to create the whole family at once, but Tyndale had not planned on using the font beyond what was in the first edition of the NLT. Initially only a roman and italic were commissioned. Then, after some time they asked for a bold, then small caps were requested—and finally a bold italic. “Lucerna became the signature font for the NLT2,” Botts says. “We went back to Brian several times to complete the family—always under tight deadlines.”

“The project stretched over 18 months, with different portions of the family being completed at different times,” recalls Sooy. “It was a challenge to keep the original intent and visual concept in mind when months had passed.” He says that the key to a consistent design was keeping good notes. www.briansooyco.com

TWO GOOD VIEWS
ITC Franklin and Lucerna are about as different from each other as two designs can possibly be. Yet they both meet Ward’s criteria for legibility, and are designs with spirit and personality—the best of both worlds.