Bastard (typeface)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bastard is a blackletter typeface designed by Jonathan Barnbrook (b. 1966) in 1990. The name derives from a typographic classification known as Bastarda. The Bastard face is an exploration of the blackletter face (the earliest types, similar to those made by Gutenberg, and based upon monastic script) with a simple kit of parts.The face is available in three weights: Spindly Bastard, Fat Bastard, and Even Fatter Bastard.
While the angular terminals suggest the nib of a pen, the typeface was drawn electronically and avoids curved strokes. The c. 1865 typeface Fletcher is similar in its purely geometric construction.
Cultural associations with blackletter faces is wide and include the bible, the mediaeval period, vampires, Nazism (even though the Nazis actually banned the use of blackletter in Germany after 1941: see Fraktur), heavy metal music, and neo-nazism. A 1998 exhibition at the Cooper Union for the Advances of Scienes and Art's Herb Lubalin Study Center titled Blackletter Type and National Identity presented an historic survey of the letter type, and included Barnbrook's Bastard face.
[edit] References
- Bain, Peter and Paul Shaw. Blackletter: Type and National Identity. Princeton Architectural Press: 1998. ISBN 1-56898-125-2.
- Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7.
- Macmillan, Neil. An A–Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press: 2006. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.
