Janson Text® is a serif typeface originally designed by Miklós Kis, a Hungarian type designer from the late 17th century. Available in eight weights in strong contrasting strokes with a robust form and high legibility, Janson Text was released as a variant of the Janson original in 1985 by Linotype and is a still a popular choice for magazine and book publishers.
Janson Text History
Janson Text® has taken its name from a Dutch type designer by the name of Anton Janson, a punchcutter from the late 17th century who was around at the same time as the actual typeface cutter, Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis who had travelled to Amsterdam in 1680 to work under Dirk Voskens. How the typeface ended up named after Anton Janson – a typographer who had nothing to do with this typeface at all and worked in Leipzig is a mystery.
In 1919, some of Kis’ matrices and punches were recovered and used at the Frankfurt-based Stempel AG foundry to revive the Janson typeface. The recovery of the Kis matrices inspired Chauncey H Griffith of the Mergenthaler Linotype Foundry to re-issue the typeface known at the time simply as “Janson” as Janson Text. In the 1950’s, Stempel Foundry’s Hermann Zapf produced a metal cut which was the basis for the modern digital version of Janson Text created in 1985 by Prof. Horst Heiderhoff of the Linotype Design Studio. Heiderhoff expanded the Janson family of fonts to extend it to its current eight weights and gave the Janson font family its current name: Janson Text.
Reference:
http://www.linotype.com/6290/jansontext.html
http://www.linotype.com/879/JansonText-family.html?site=details
http://publications.missouri.edu/logo/lelements.html
Janson Text Usage
Architectural Digest uses Janson Text® in the body text of all its articles.
The Office of Publications and Alumni Communication from the University of Missouri use Janson Text in their logo.
Janson Text™ is a very popular typeface for books and magazine publications of all types and has been the typeface of choice for many bestselling books.
