A (very small) history of (very) small types

Small types — i.e. sizes between 6 and 8 pt — seem to have emerged as early as the late 15th century, according to Theodore Low de Vinne who mentioned in a short essay a ‘remarkably neat Roman letter on nonpareil body’ (6 pt) used by the Venetian printers Giovanni and Gregorio de Gregoriis in 1498. He stressed that considering ‘the difficulty of cutting symmetrical letters on small a body and of casting them in types at this early period of the history of typefounding, when tools were imperfect and experience was limited, this fount of nonpareil may be regarded as a feat in typefounding.’

1. See Theodore Low de Vinne, ‘Microscopic Types’, Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 1, Issue 4, 30 April 1887, p. 25.

[1]

The spread of small-format books and bibles, particularly fit for travelling, stimulated several punchcutters and typefounders to improve their skills and to expand their range of type bodies; small types gradually spread during the 16th century, alongside the development of the printing and publishing trades in Europe. For instance, in France, Robert Granjon provided the Lyons printer Jean de Tournes with a ‘Nompareille’ (6 pt) in 1547, whereas a few years later, Pierre Haultin demonstrated an outstanding rational design approach in cutting a new roman type of the same size.

2. See H. D. L. Vervliet, ‘Printing Types of Pierre Haultin; C. 1510–1587’, The Palaeotypography of the French Renaissance. Selected Papers on Sixteenth-Century Typefaces. Leiden: Brill, 2008, pp. 243–85 ; Fred Smeijers, Counterpunch. London: Hyphen Press, 2011 (2nd ed.), pp. 67–71.

[2]

One could assume that a boundary in terms of legibility and readability had been reached and therefore was carefully respected, yet, even smaller sizes would appear: Jean Jannon introduced his ‘Sédanoise’ (5 pt) in the 1620s, which was used in several of the books he printed in Sedan, including a 32mo Virgil and an octavo Bible in one single volume. During the following decade, in Paris, Jacques II de Sanlecque came up with the ‘Parisienne’ (5 pt).

3. See Jacques Lacombe (ed.), Encyclopédie méthodique. Arts et métiers mécaniques. Paris: Panckoucke, tome premier, 1782, p. 435. This size was known as ‘Pearl’ in England.

[3]

Later in the 17th century, ‘Robijn’ and ‘Diamand’ (4 pt) types were produced in the Low Countries. Some of them were imported into England and inspired British founders, such as Edmund Fry who asserted in the specimen of his foundry, issued in 1787, that his own ‘Diamond’ roman was the ‘Smallest Letter in the World’, as it was fitting considerably more text than ‘the famous Dutch Diamond’.

4. See Talbot Baines Reed, A History of the Old English Letter Foundries. London: Elliot Stock, 1887, p. 40. Christoffel van Dijck and Dirk Voskens were respectively credited with ‘Robijn’ and ‘Diamand’ cuts by Reed; however, much research is needed on their real achievements.

[4] The 18th century saw Johann Michael Fleischmann cut several ‘Ruby’, ‘Diamond’ and ‘Pearl’ sizes, acquired by or made for the Enschedé foundry in Haarlem.

5. See Charles Enschedé, Typefoundries in the Netherlands, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century: a history based mainly on material in the collection of Joh. Enschede en Zonen at Haarlem by Charles Enschede; an English translation with revisions and notes by Harry Carter, with the assistance of Netty Hoeflake ; edited by Lotte Hellinga. Haarlem: Stichting Museum Enschedé, 1978 [1908], pp. 191–244.

[5] Louis Luce, a contemporary of Fleischmann, cut for the French Royal printing office its smallest size, the ‘Perle’ (4.25 pt), first shown in 1740 in the Épreuve du premier alphabeth droit et penché, whereas Pierre-Simon Fournier would include in the second volume of his Manuel typographique, published in 1766, a Parisienne.

When the ‘modern’ face arose and began to replace the ‘old style’ in the early 19th century, its main features, especially the increased contrast between thick and thin strokes, could have stood in the way of designing legible small sizes. Nevertheless, punchcutters such as Firmin Didot and Joseph Molé added a Parisienne, and Giambattista Bodoni a ‘Parmigianina’ (5 pt) to their respective establishments. Moreover, most of the British foundries produced modern Pearl and Diamond sizes.

6. Joseph Vibert had already cut a ‘Parisienne’ for the foundry of Gillé fils in the mid-1790s. See J. G. Gillé, Notice pour le Concours des progrès de l’Industrie française en 1823. Paris: Gillé, Delaunay & Mongie, 1823, p. 10.

[6]

In the meantime, a few publishers decided to create new series of small-format and miniature books: J.-B. Fournier Father & Son launched their ‘Bibliothèque portative du voyageur’ (32mo, app. 68 × 92 mm) in 1800, set in a ‘Nompareille type’.

7. See Le Citoyen français, no. 627, 17 Thermidor An IX (4 August 1801), p. 4. Several volumes of the ‘Bibliothèque portative du voyageur’ can be seen and downloaded here: http://www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/structure/4942170 (last retrieved 17 July 2014).

[7] William Pickering began in 1820 the publication of his ‘Diamond Classics’ (48mo, app. 43 × 83 mm) with a selection of Latin, Italian, Greek and English literature, obviously named after the name of the type body used.[8]

See Louis Mohr, Des impressions microscopiques. Paris: Édouard Rouveyre, 1879; Catalogue de la collection d’éditions microscopiques de Madame G. P. Paris: publisher unknown, 1893.

Jules Didot prominently used a 4½ pt type — originally cut for his father Pierre by Joseph Vibert in the 1810s — for the ‘Collection des classiques en miniature’ (1824–8, 32mo) printed for Dufour, as well as for his own ‘Collection des classiques français’ whose publication began in 1825 with Voltaire’s Complete Works, gathered in a single octavo volume.

Surprisingly, a new ‘low’ would be reached shortly afterwards when Henri Didot cut his ‘caractères microscopiques’.[9]

9. See Jacques André, Christian Laucou, Histoire de l’écriture typographique. Le XIXe siècle français. Gap: Atelier Perrousseaux, 2013, pp. 119–22.

Henri was developing since the beginning of the century his ‘moule polyamatype’, a new casting mould that could enable the fount of characters without blow holes. This was a welcome improvement at a time when the thin strokes of modern faces were inevitably damaged by this defect.[10]

10. See Dictionnaire de l’industrie manufacturière, commerciale et agricole. Bruxelles: Méline, Cans et Cie, 1837, vol. II, pp. 478–81.

He later modified his mould so it could cast between 100 and 180 characters of various sizes in one operation, and was awarded a gold medal at the Exhibition of French industrial products in 1823 for this invention, where his first microscopic types were possibly displayed.[11]

11. See the Rapport sur les produits de l’industrie française. Paris : Imprimerie royale, p. 422, which mentioned for the first time Henri Didot’s caractères microscopiques.

Henri cut a ‘Demi-nompareille’ (3 pt) and later a 2½ pt size that were both used for a few miniature books (64mo) printed by his brother Didot jeune, such as La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes (1827). His achievements were emulated in Italy, where Cesare Antonio Farina cut the ‘occhio de mosca’ (3 pt) type in 1834, an endeavour quickly imitated by another punchcutter named Claudio Wilmant who allegedly cut his ‘Carattere Milanina’ within two months.[12]

12. See Justin Howes, ‘Extreme type: progress, “perfectibility” and letter design in eighteenth-century Europe’, Typography Papers, no. 7, 2007, pp. 61–2.

Farina’s ‘fly eye’ was ultimately used for an edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy, published in Milan in 1878 by Ulrico Hoepli. It took its printers, the Salmin brothers, five years to complete this tiny little book (app. 34 × 52 mm), also known as Dantino, much to the detriment of its typesetter’s eyesight.[13]

13. See Mohr, 1879, pp. 3–4.

Microscopic types could be then seen as the outcome of a design and technological performance, a demonstration of progress for its own sake, which might have satisfied the curiosity of bibliophiles more than the common reader.

The same year the Dantino was displayed in the Third Paris World’s fair, in 1878, the French scientist and ophthalmologist Émile Javal began to share the results of his groundbreaking experiences describing the mechanisms involved in the process of reading.[14]

14. Javal published on this subject a series of papers in the scientific journal Annales d’oculistique in 1878–9.

He later gathered the outcome of his various research in Physiologie de la Lecture et de l’Écriture, published in 1905. Most of all, Javal submitted his practical views on improving the legibility of printing types for small and very small print, and defined two models of letterforms, both drawn by Charles Dreyfuss. These uncanny designs proved to be rather effective in terms of legibility when photographically reduced to 5 and 4 pt, and even to 1 pt.[15]

15. See Javal, ‘Typographie compacte’, Physiologie de la Lecture et de l’Écriture. Paris: Alcan, 1905, pp. 197–233.

Javal asserted that his research influenced and modified the design of several types produced by the Deberny foundry.[16]

16. See Javal, 1905, pp. 225–6.

Furthermore, in a specimen issued in 1911, the Renault foundry advertised one of its previous typefaces, the ‘Série 36’, as having been revised according to Javal’s principles. The critical opinion of Victor Breton, shown alongside the specimen, is worth translating and quoting at length:

‘Taking inspiration from the famous theories of Dr Javal, Mr. Marcou, the successor of Mr. Renault, designed and had cut this beautiful series of ‘classic’ text types, whose tangible examples can be seen here opposite. This Renault text series can be considered as a kind of medicinal typeface, specifically for the preservation of the sight. The width of the letters, most appropriate, makes reading easier without tiring the eye, whereas the spacing is well balanced between them; the serifs, instead of being right-angled thin and delicate strokes underlining the stems, are bracketed, their curly endings arising gradually so to ease the abrupt transition from thick to thin strokes.

When Didot created his types, so beautiful at that time, artificial lighting depended on candles and oil lamps. Nowadays, they are replaced by gas, electricity and white lights which have completely modified the conditions of readability of texts; and the special goal of Dr Javal’s studies is to adapt the pleasant Didot letterforms to the new lighting conditions.

The Renault text typeface wonderfully answers the desiderata of the oculist scientist.’[17]

17. Spécimen des caractères de labeurs […] etc. Paris, Fonderie Renault, 1911, n.p.

It is neither known if this input was profitable for the foundry and its clientele, nor if there were further attempts to integrate it to other types. Almost a century later, Thomas Huot-Marchand rediscovered the models of Javal and Dreyfuss for his studies project at the Atelier national de recherche typographique in 2001–2.[18]

18. See T. Huot-Marchand, ‘Minuscule’, Typographie Monattsblätter / Revue Suisse de l'Imprimerie, 2, 2004, pp. 45–60.

He designed Minuscule, a series of five different sizes (from Six to Two) with their own variations in x-height, apertures and ascender/descender length, the Minuscule Two being the most radical and faithful to their inspiration.

Javal’s research was also rapidly adopted in the United States, where interest in legibility was on the rise, leading to new studies on the subject.[19]

19. See for instance Barbara Elizabeth Roethlein, ‘The Relative Legibility of Different Faces of Printing Types’, The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 23, no. 1, Jan., 1912, pp. 1–36.

At the same time, the outbreak of mechanical (or hot metal) typesetting in the 1880s with the Linotype, created by Ottmar Mergenthaler, had a gradual influence on typefaces designed for newspapers, and particular attention was paid to small sizes. The Mergenthaler Linotype Company, under the supervision of its vice-president Chauncey H. Griffith, set up its ‘Legibility Group’ in 1922. Its aim was to produce a new series of newspaper types which (in their own words) ‘while actually taking up no more space and giving more words to the column than the types that had been in general use, appear to be much larger and are more readable.’[20]

20. See The Legibility of Type. Brooklyn: Mergenthaler Linotype Company, 1935, p. 21.

These were Ionic No 5 (1925), Excelsior (1931), Opticon (1936), Paragon (1936) and Corona (1941), each one fulfilling a different and complementary goal, and cut at sizes as small as 5 pt.[21]

21. For Ionic No 5 and Excelsior, as shown in the Specimen Book of Linotype Faces, published by the company in 1939.

The advent of photocomposition in the 1950s provoked even more significant changes in the way text (but also display) types were devised, and Ladislas Mandel, among others, was a pioneer in this field.[22]

22. See Olivier Nineuil, ‘Ladislas Mandel, explorateur de la typo française’, Étapes, no. 55, October 1999, pp. 45–64.

He began his career in 1954 by working under the supervision of Adrian Frutiger, head of the design studio at Deberny & Peignot. The Parisian foundry, whose CEO Charles Peignot supported the development of the Lumitype machine invented by René Higonnet and Louis Moyroud, needed to transfer its metal back catalogue to photocomposition as well as create new typeface families such as Univers.

Mandel seemingly proved to be ingenious in helping Frutiger bring his designs to fruition and eventually succeeded him in 1958 when Frutiger set up his own studio. He retained this position for twenty years despite Deberny & Peignot’s steady decline and his increasing difficulties to develop new projects.[23]

23. See Alice Savoie, International cross-currents in typeface design: France, Britain and the USA in the phototypesetting era, PhD thesis, University of Reading, 2014, pp. 169–79.

Nonetheless, Mandel designed in the early 1970s two typefaces — Edgware and Univad — for a British newspaper’s classified advertising, and when he established his freelance practice after 1977, he specialised in custom typefaces for telephone directories. His contributions in this field were crucial: Galfra (Belgium, Italy, United Kingdom, USA, 1975–90), Clottes (France, 1985–6), Nordica (1985), Colorado (USA, 1995–8).[24]

24. See Richard Southall, ‘The Colorado typemaking project’, Printer's Type in the Twentieth Century: Manufacturing and Design Methods. London: The British Library/Oak Knoll Press, pp. 204–22.

Almost in parallel, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) commissioned Matthew Carter to design a new typeface intended to replace Bell Gothic, originally created by Mergenthaler Linotype under Chauncey H. Griffith’s oversight. It was introduced in 1937 when AT&T’s directories were set with the Linotype machines, but the change to photocomposition technology, and in this case Cathode Ray Typesetting (CRT), inevitably corrupted its characters when printed with high-speed offset lithography presses.[25]

25. See Nick Sherman, ‘Bell Centennial. Form & Function’, http://nicksherman.com/articles/bellCentennial.html (last retrieved 15 July 2014).

Bell Gothic’s successor was expected to fit an increased number of characters per line and therefore to save paper and ink costs while being more legible. Carter came up with four weights: Address, Sub-Caption, Name and Number, and Bold Listing, the latter becoming the most emblematic of the family with its enlarged notches (or ink traps). Bell Centennial made its debut in 1978.

Finally, the transition from photocomposition to desktop publishing and digital tools would make the type designers’ job easier on many levels, and even more so for micro typography. Gerard Unger, a champion of pragmatism and experiment in design, created the aptly named Gulliver in 1993, aka ‘the world's most economical printing type’, comprising a Compact version for text below 6 pt. In 1999, the Hoefler & Frere-Jones foundry provided the Wall Street Journal with a custom family named Retina, one of many examples of ‘agate newspapers’ typefaces that multiplied over the last years. Its purpose was to increase the legibility of the Wall Street Journal’s financial tables and stock listings.[26]

26. See http://garciamedia.com/blog/retina (last retrieved 8 April 2025).

While legibility remains a necessary virtue for fine print, type and graphic designers enjoy the stylistic vices of microscopic types. In 2003, Christian Schwartz intentionally designed the extensive Amplitude family (Font Bureau) to be used for small and big texts. And when Mark Porter revamped in 2010 the layout of the Courrier international French weekly, he turned Joshua Darden’s Freight Micro, a small weight of his Freight family, into an unexpected yet refreshing headline face.[27]

27. See http://fontsinuse.com/uses/8/courrier-international (last retrieved 27 August 2014).

Bell Centennial, Retina and Minuscule have been ‘hijacked’ as well for editorial use, their purposely-shaped silhouette cutting a fine figure when enlarged.

Jean-Baptiste Levée carefully studied the work of his predecessors to devise a new part of its Gemeli sans serif family: Gemeli Micro. Comprising three weights (light, regular, bold) in roman and italic, it has all the characteristics usually required for small print types: large x-height, short ascenders and descenders, wide apertures, generous ink traps and loose spacing, ensuring legibility below 8 pt. When oversized, it can shift into a flavorful display face. It also has alternate glyphs for ‘a’ and ‘g’, a variety of ligatures, and extensive language support.

In many ways, Gemeli Micro demonstrates that there is, still, room for experiment and improvement in one of the most singular territories of typeface design, a place where the requirements of legibility and the audacity of style can coexist.

Initially published in 2015 for Gemeli Micro type specimen, ISBN 979-10-93578-02-6.