One of the fonts I’m getting close to finishing is Grad, the most recent type design of Phil Martin. Phil designed it in the early 1990s for use in a newsletter he published called Re:Language. Until I started work on it earlier this year, it only existed as a set of bitmap fonts on Phil’s old DOS computer, and it only worked with the old desktop publishing/word processing program XyWrite.

Grad is essentially an enhanced and augmented version of Century Schoolbook. While Phil did his version by modifying bitmaps of the Bitstream version of Century Schoolbook, I went back to original American Type Founders specimens, creating my own version of Century Schoolbook, rather than relying on existing digital versions. My Century Schoolbook fonts won’t be released, but were used as the basis for the new Grad.

Stylistically, Grad is similar to late nineteenth century faces like Ronaldson or Bookman, with other touches that could only come from the mind of Phil Martin. In the initial release, there will be three styles: Regular, Italic, and Bold (as shown above). There is also a condensed style planned for later release.

If you want to see it in action in text, here is a PDF from Phil’s website (a chapter of his on-going autobiography) which is set in the final PostScript Type 1 versions of the fonts. [Update: Phil’s website no longer exists.]

I’m doing Grad at Phil’s request, but I will be marketing it in the usual venues and splitting the revenues with Phil.