What is Garamond used for?

Books, literature, anything that wants to look like it was set rather than typed. You will have seen it on The Harry Potter books in the UK, Dr. Seuss titles, A great many novel interiors.

What is the difference between Garamond and Sabon?

Sabon is a Garamond derivative with a larger x-height and heavier strokes. Check the lowercase a: Garamond's bowl is smaller and its top curve more delicate.

Garamond

Claude Garamond, 1530

Serif · Books, literature, anything that wants to look like it was set rather than typed.

Every Garamond in use is a twentieth-century interpretation of sixteenth-century punches, and they differ enough that Adobe Garamond, ITC Garamond and EB Garamond do not look like the same typeface. Some of what is sold as Garamond derives from Jean Jannon rather than Claude Garamond, a misattribution that persisted for three centuries. It is unusually economical of ink and paper, which is why it comes up whenever anyone calculates printing costs.

How to tell it apart

Mistaken for	Which letters to check
Sabon	Sabon is a Garamond derivative with a larger x-height and heavier strokes. Check the lowercase a: Garamond's bowl is smaller and its top curve more delicate.

The facts

Designed by: Claude Garamond
Released: 1530
Classification: Serif
What it signals now: Books, literature, anything that wants to look like it was set rather than typed.

Where you have seen it

The Harry Potter books in the UK
Dr. Seuss titles
A great many novel interiors

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.

Common questions

Who designed Garamond?: Claude Garamond, in 1530.
What is Garamond used for?: Books, literature, anything that wants to look like it was set rather than typed. You will have seen it on The Harry Potter books in the UK, Dr. Seuss titles, A great many novel interiors.
What is the difference between Garamond and Sabon?: Sabon is a Garamond derivative with a larger x-height and heavier strokes. Check the lowercase a: Garamond's bowl is smaller and its top curve more delicate.

Typefaces from the 1530s 1 here
Caslon William Caslon, 1722
Baskerville John Baskerville, 1757
Didot Firmin Didot, 1784
Bodoni Giambattista Bodoni, 1798
Times New Roman Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent, 1932
Trajan Carol Twombly, 1989
Georgia Matthew Carter, 1996

Sources

Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked