Baskerville

Baskerville pushed the contrast between thick and thin strokes further than anything before it, which required him to also invent smoother paper and blacker ink to print it — the typeface and the technology arrived together. Contemporaries hated it and claimed the sharpness damaged the eyes. A widely reported study by Errol Morris in 2012 found readers marginally more likely to agree with a statement set in Baskerville than in other faces, which is a fun result that has not been strongly replicated.

The facts

Designed by

John Baskerville

Released

1757

Classification

Serif

What it signals now

Transitional, high-contrast, formal. Certificates, university crests, anything wanting authority.

Where you have seen it

• Academic publishing
• Wedding stationery
• Diploma and certificate printing

This page describes the typeface rather than showing it. Displaying a specimen requires a licensed font file and almost none of these may be redistributed, so the descriptions name the letters to look at instead.