Ionic Modern: A latter modern

By the mid-nineteenth century, several different designs might be shown at the same size, with degrees of change, such as narrowness or weight. The changing methods of printing and paper often give the type a more contrasted and at times emaciated appearance – almost as if a large size was being printed at a smaller size. The impression is also of technical ability overcoming common sense: If we can make this paper smoother, why not? If we can cut this serif finer, why not? A face from the 1850s has a much more pronounced change in weight between thick and thin strokes, and the roundness of early Moderns gives way to a more ovoid shape, which becomes increasingly pronounced as weight is gained. And though these faces have a seductive charm in well-printed specimens, they could appear weak or damaged under less ideal conditions. 

The Old Style that Miller & Richard began to produce around 1860, an ‘improvement’ on the earlier serifs, was in part a reaction to the reemergence of Caslon’s Old Face and its ‘irregularities’, but also to the weakness of the contemporary Modern. Other reactions were the Ionic of the Caslon Foundry and the Clarendon of the Fann Street Foundry, designs that took the Modern face and lowered the contrast so it approached that of a slab, but retained the bracketing of a serif.

These ideas of low-contrast serifs would later develop in the United States into the Century series of faces, such as Century Expanded and Century Schoolbook. But though many typefaces appeared as reactions to the Modern, the form remained widely popular; Monotype Modern (Series One) was an adoption of a Miller & Richard Modern, and Monotype also reissued a series of Modern revivals, including Scotch Roman styles (Series 46, Series 137). Perhaps the most resilient of the latter style of Modern was Modern No. 20 (originally cut in the 1870s), issued by Stephenson & Blake, which remained in production until the end of metal.

Ionic Modern came from the desire to create a face that captured the qualities of these latter Moderns for headlines. We envisioned a design which, though related to the Modern as portrayed in Brunel, would lose the softness and roundness of the earlier form. Unlike Brunel, our design would not draw on a specific source, but instead would serve as a more generic interpretation of the form. So Ionic Modern’s serifs are longer and more bracketed than Brunel’s; contrast is more dramatic; balls are more defined; and rounds move towards a diamond shape. In proportion the counters are narrower, yet the letters are wider, with a larger x-height. Tails on the R and t are longer and pronounced, ending on a vertical. In the italic, the thin strokes join the main stroke at a much lower point, producing a dramatic impression compared to the more genteel Brunel. 

The Modern of the early part of the nineteenth century was the dominant face. Emphasis was expressed through size, capitalisation, and of course weight. As the century progressed, the development of styles such as the slab serif and sans serif complemented and often supplanted the serif for emphasis, so the later Moderns rarely attained a bold weight, let alone a fat face. By contrast, this was a fashion for lighter weights (personified in the Caslon specimens of the 1870s), which thin the thick stroke and exaggerate the length of the serif.

This shift away from the gentler, rounder modern to a more extreme contrast model seems to happen by the end of the 1830s and the beginning of the 1840s. By the middle of the century, the older moderns had disappeared. A case could be made that a change in era, from the Georgian to the Victorian, heralded a change in taste. As we started work on a Modern from this period, it occurred to us that though these latter Moderns differed in detail from Caslon Ionic, they shared the same skeleton and structure. This gave rise to the possibility that the Modern could be derived from the Ionic, and that together they could form one family: Ionic Modern. On a very basic level this could be achieved simply by increasing the contrast, though working out the details would of course be more complicated. 

Taking advantage of today’s digital technology, we realised that by sharing the same point structure between the Ionic on one end and the Modern on the other, we could create intermediate versions. The question then became: Would these computer-generated typefaces have actual value, or would they be neither good Moderns nor good Ionics? Initial tests showed us that we could produce, at one end, lower-contrast Moderns that were convincing in design as text faces; and, at the other end, higher-contrast Ionics that became almost Century-like in quality. The success of these tests gave us the impetus to create not only static fonts, where we would define contrast and weight, but also variable fonts, where the end user could. This would empower designers and typographers to create new variants based on specific conditions, such as making a slightly heavier version of a text Modern for reversing out of a solid dark background.

Whereas the Ionic model has a large x-height and shortened ascenders and descenders, the Modern has a smaller x-height (though larger than Brunel’s), with slightly taller ascenders and much deeper descenders. On the horizontal plane, the modern is narrower both in spacing and character width; some characters, such as M, R, T, h, m, and n, are noticeably more compact. The Ionic’s low contrast means that the pinching-in of the curves is not immediately obvious. As contrast increases and the inner counter becomes taller, however, the change between thick and thin becomes more apparent.

In making the thin seriffed face, we took the opportunity to make a matching lightweight Ionic. Such lightweight forms can be found in the specimens of the Fann Street Foundry as Extended Clarendon No.2, later rebranded as Stephenson Blake’s Consort in the twentieth century. At such a light weight, the Ionic loses contrast to become more monolinear, and the serifs gain a prominence in the design, particularly in all-capital settings. This gives Ionic Modern a weight axis from a thin to extra bold and an optical axis that goes from Micro (the same contrast as Caslon Ionic) to Poster.

Another detail between the Ionic and the Modern is the nature of the ball terminal in various characters such as the J, a, c, f, g, j, and y; and quotations and numerals. In the case of the former, this is a sharp juncture between stroke and ball; in the latter, it is a tight but noticeable softer curve. With variable font technology, this automatically changes at a specific point, but the alternative style can also be accessed as an OpenType feature. 

Most of the inaugural Commercial Classics releases dealt with the first half of the nineteenth century, when intense innovation occurred with the emergence of new forms: bold, fat face, slab, sans, Italian – followed by modifications of these forms like condensation and rounding. Caslon Ionic and Ionic Modern belong to the period after that: the Victorian era, with its changing tastes and technical development.

In the age of metal type, with each font cut to a specific size, a font was created to work perfectly at that size, a precision that was lost in the digital era with single designs that could be scaled up and down. This led to designs that either appeared too clunky on the page when type was large, or too spindly when a face suitable for headlines was set in text sizes. To deal with this issue, Brunel had separate masters: Text, Deck, Poster, and Hairline, designed for precise sizes. Ionic Modern, too, has specific optical sizes: Micro, Text, Poster – but the fact that it also comes as a variable font means that end users now have total control over how heavy or contrasted the face can be, making it even more versatile.