Rockwell can trace its roots back to the London type founder, Vincent Figgins, who released the first successful slab, or “square,” serif typeface in 1815. Unlike classical serif faces, this design had blunt, straight-edged serifs and almost no thick-thin contrast in the stroke weights. The face was a cap-only design called Antique and was offered in three sizes.
About the same time, William Caslon IV brought out a mono-weight sans serif typeface called Egyptian. This term was soon used to label all slab serif typefaces, and is still in use today.
By 1825, more slab serif typefaces appeared, now with lowercase characters. The popularity of these designs waxed and then waned again during the first three decades of the twentieth century, until geometric sans serif typefaces became popular. Soon, new slab serif typefaces patterned after geometric shapes began to be released. The Rockwell family, first issued in 1933, is Monotype’s answer to this typographic style.
Rockwell’s precursor was a design called Litho Antique, produced by the Inland Type Foundry in 1910. American Type Founders revived the face in the 1920s, with Morris Fuller Benton cutting several new weights. The Monotype Corporation produced its version of Rockwell in 1933; unfortunately, some of the literature erroneously referred to it as Stymie Bold, thereby creating confusion that still exists today.
Rockwell is a geometric slab serif design. Like many of its square-serif cousins, Rockwell has very heavy serifs with no bracketing. Changes in stroke weight are imperceptible.
Rockwell is an exceptionally robust design that evokes a feeling of straightforward honesty when set in text composition. It’s a strong, adaptable display face for headlines and posters, and is also legible in short text blocks. With nine weights, the Rockwell typeface family is a powerful and versatile graphic communicator.