The ITC Stone® typeface is more than a simple font family - it’s an extended one that provides solutions for a multitude of graphic problems. Consisting of four subgroups - serif, sans serif, informal and humanistic, ITC Stone was purposely designed by Sumner Stone so that each style interrelates with the others and provides a wealth of options in one product. Stone accomplished this by utilizing a common underlying model: they all share the same cap height, lowercase x-height and stem weights. Although this design bond ties them together, each one is still able to stand on its own as a distinct typestyle.
ITC Stone Serif was conceived as a typeface with a blend of written and sculptural forms, slightly condensed, with a large x-height, while ITC Stone Sans combines sans serif letterforms with the proportions of the Stone Serif and has a moderate, but obvious, contrast in stroke weight. The letterforms of ITC Stone Informal have minimal stroke contrast with slightly rounded shapes and stroke endings. ITC Stone Humanist, which grew out of an experiment with the medium weight of Stone Sans, features the distinctive vertical lowercase strokes that have been cropped at an angle, as have the ascender and descender stroke endings.
In creating the ITC Stone type family, Sumner Stone’s target audience was the typographic neophyte. However, early in the design process he realized that he was creating a suite of fonts that would also appeal to the most sophisticated of graphic designers. The extensive usability of this font family, combined with its subtle design, ensure its place among font superfamilies.