Stellar/Truesdell

Stellar

Robert Hunter Middleton’s drew the original design of Stellar for the Ludlow Typograph Company in Chicago. Work began in the late 1920s, when Middleton was asked to create a sans serif type family to compete with European imports of Futura and Kabel. Stellar was Middleton’s attempt to raise the ante. Where Futura and Kabel were geometric in design and monotone in weight, Stellar was based on roman character proportions and stroke weighs were stressed.

In the late 1990s, Dave Farey took on the task of reviving the Stellar design. While Ludlow cut Stellar in a full range of point sizes, the family was limited to just a roman and bold design. Farey’s revival is twice as large a family. It ranges from a very light called Stellar Nova to a very bold called Zeta In between are Lyra and Epsilon.

Truesdell

Frederic Goudy drew Truesdell in 1930 and first used it for an article in a quarterly journal for book collectors. Since it was a small family and not promoted, Goudy received few orders for fonts. The original drawings and matrices for the face were lost in the fire that destroyed Goudy’s studio in 1939.

The only known examples of Truesdell fonts reside in the extensive collection of typographic material at the Rochester Institute of Technology School of Printing. It was proofs from these fonts that served as the basis for Monotype’s digital revival of the family. Monotype Truesdell was released in March of 1994, just slightly over fifty-five years after fire destroyed Goudy’s original work.

Instructions for printing the card templates, as well as information on purchasing the pre–cut cardstock can be found on the Avery® Web site.

Download the Type Trading Card here (PDF)

• Allan Haley is Director of Words & Letters at Monotype Imaging. Here he is responsible for strategic planning and creative implementation of just about everything related to typeface designs. He is also responsible for editorial content for the company’s type libraries and Web sites.
• Prior to working for Monotype, Mr. Haley was Principal of Resolution, a consulting firm with expertise in fonts, font technology, type and typographic communication. He was also executive vice president of International Typeface Corporation.
• Mr. Haley is ex officio Chairman of the Board of the Society of Typographic Aficionados, and past President of the New York Type Directors Club. He is highly regarded as an educator and is a frequently requested speaker at national computer and design conferences.
• Mr. Haley is also a prolific writer, with five books on type and graphic communication and hundreds of articles for graphic design publications to his credit.