Stone Serif Essay

523 Words2 Pages

Stone Serif, created by Sumner Stone, is a typeface with an unmatched ability to be used on a variety of outputs, from small sizes on economical, everyday printers, to imagesetters used for high quality printing of glossy magazines or newsletters. This typeface, which a part of a larger type family, or a “super family,” is classified as a serif typeface. Prior to its creation in 1987 at Adobe Systems, personal computers were slowly, but surely, becoming more mainstream. With this booming invention, the first glimpse at the desire for typography became apparent, and Sumner Stone was in the right place. Stone, a previous Hallmark card lettering artist, eventually landed a career in Adobe Systems, leading to him becoming the first Director of Typography in the company. With this, he went on to create his first type family, ITC Stone, which was broken down into multiple other styles and subfamilies, such as Stone Serif, Stone Sans, and Stone Informal. Sumner Stone remarked that the inspiration to create a superfamily such as ITC Stone stemmed from the need to seamlessly mix differing type styles on a …show more content…

He attended Reed College in Portland where he studied calligraphy and sociology, gaining a particular interest in letterforms and their significance. He views analog letter design as a meditative activity which was brought on by his realization of the importance of letters and their ability to express our abilities to speak, or even think. A key aspect of his design process specifically, is his desire to physically draw each letter shape on paper. In fact, as a new employee at Adobe, he immediately insisted on having a drawing board in his office to ensure his design process was done properly, and without computers. Overall, Stone believes in the importance of creating new type designs, rather than merely reformatting

Open Document