Monotype Bembo is considered one of the most handsome revivals of Aldus Manutius’ 15th century roman type, yet the companion italic originally designed for it was rejected outright.
Prior to Bembo’s release as metal fonts in 1929, Stanley Morison commissioned renowned calligrapher Alfred Fairbank to create the italic. Fairbank’s design, while undeniably beautiful, was deemed to be inharmonious with the Bembo roman. A second, more conventional italic was eventually drawn and added to the Bembo family.
Fairbank’s design managed to have a modest life as a standalone font of metal type, but it never made the leap into phototype fonts. The face might have been lost, were it not for Robin Nicholas, Monotype’s Head of Typography in the United Kingdom.
Nicholas decided to use the original drawings for Fairbank as the starting point for a new digital design. He improved spacing and optimized the design for digital imaging. Nicholas also created lowercase letters, fancy and swash capitals, and enough alternate characters to personalize virtually any design project.
The result of Nicholas’s efforts is a small type family that includes Fairbank, a revived version of the metal font, and Fairbank Chancery, a more calligraphic rendition of the design. An additional suite of ornate caps, elegant ligatures, and beginning and ending letters accompanies each font, as does a full complement of lowercase swash characters.
Thanks to this creative revival, Fairbank is no longer a failed Bembo italic, but a sumptuous, elegant design in its own right. Suitable for holiday greetings, invitations, or any application where its Italianate beauty is called for, Fairbank is a true “gem” of a typeface.