Specimen-on-demand
Specimen-on-demand was a project presented by Studio Bergini in 2019. We had to pick a font from a selection we were given, and use that to celebrate a story or piece of text of our choice, and print it using the site Lulu.com. My font was Times New Roman, and my story was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Times New Roman is my chosen font, it’s a serif typeface designed for legibility in body text. It was commissioned by the British newspaper The Times
in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic advisor to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration with Victor Lardent, who was a lettering artist in the Times’ advertising department. Despite it being created for the newspaper, it reminds me of fairy tales and children’s books, it was used in “My Treasury of Stories and Rhymes” by Armadillo Books, (an imprint of Bookmart Limited). I began to research into the Baroque period, which is a highly ornate and often extravagant style of architecture, art and music that flourished in Europe from the early 17th until the mid-18th century.
in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic advisor to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration with Victor Lardent, who was a lettering artist in the Times’ advertising department. Despite it being created for the newspaper, it reminds me of fairy tales and children’s books, it was used in “My Treasury of Stories and Rhymes” by Armadillo Books, (an imprint of Bookmart Limited). I began to research into the Baroque period, which is a highly ornate and often extravagant style of architecture, art and music that flourished in Europe from the early 17th until the mid-18th century.
It followed the Renaissance style and preceded the Rococo (in the past often referred to as “late Baroque”) and Neoclassical styles. This style has inspired modern fairy tale, remakes, for example, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and The Nutcracker. Font styles like gothic and script suit this period, however, Times New Roman is more legible and modern.
I was struggling to find text which relates to this period, then I was recommended by the tutors to research Serial Literature. Serial Literature is sequential instalments of fictional novels, which appeared in monthly or weekly instalments. Dickens successfully published some of his fictional novels in the serial format in The Pickwick Papers, in 1836. I found a children’s novel, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which was originally published as a serial novel in the American Magazine in 1910, and then published as a book in 1911.
The fairy tale set in England, is one of Burnett’s most popular novels and is considered a classic of English children’s literature. The American edition was published by Stokes with illustrations by Maria Louise Kirk (signed as M. L. Kirk) and the British edition by Heinemann with illustrations by Charles Heath Robinson.
