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39 lines
2.1 KiB
HTML
39 lines
2.1 KiB
HTML
<p>Playfair is a transitional design. From the time of enlightenment in the
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late 18th century, the broad nib quills were replaced by pointed steel pens.
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This influenced typographical letterforms to become increasingly detached from
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the written ones. Developments in printing technology, ink, and paper making,
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made it possible to print letterforms of high contrast and delicate
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hairlines.</p>
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<p>This design lends itself to this period, and while it is not a revival of
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any particular design, it takes influence from the designs of printer and
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typeface designer John Baskerville, the punchcutter William Martin’s typeface
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for the ‘Boydell Shakspeare’ (sic) edition, and from the ‘Scotch Roman’
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designs that followed thereafter.</p>
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<p>As the name indicates, Playfair Display is well suited for titling and
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headlines. It has an extra large x-height and short descenders. It can be set
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with no leading if space is tight, for instance in news headlines, or for
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stylistic effect in titles. Capitals are extra short, and only very slightly
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heavier than the lowercase characters. This helps achieve a more even
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typographical colour when typesetting proper nouns and initialisms. Languages,
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like German, where nouns are capitalized, particularly benefit from this lower
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contrast between lower and upper case glyphs. In German, with its many
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capitalised words, and in other European languages that use many diacritical
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characters, it is advised to use more leading.</p>
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<p>Being a transitional design, stylistically Playfair can accompany Georgia,
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where Georgia is used for body text.</p>
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<p>Playfair's downloaded font files include a full set of
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<a href="http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Playfair+Display+SC">small caps</a>, common ligatures, and
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discretionary ligatures. For Polish, a set of alternate diacritical characters
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designed with ‘kreska’s are included. All European languages using the latin
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script are supported. A set of eight arrow devices are also included.</p>
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<p>To contribute to the project contact <a
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href="mailto:es@forthehearts.net">Claus Eggers Sørensen</a>.</p>
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<p>Updated in December 2013 with many small improvements, especially to
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the Cyrillic.</p>
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