The Imprint (printing trade periodical)

The Imprint was a periodical aimed at the printing trade, published in 9 issues from January to November 1913. The publishers were the Imprint Publishing Company, of 11 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London. Editors were F. Ernest Jackson, Edward Johnston, J. H. Mason, and Gerard Meynell of the Westminster Press, London, which was also the printer of the journal.

In addition to the editors, several notable printing practitioners wrote for the magazine, including Stanley Morison.

Subjects covered

Issues

The issues are dated thus:

Imprint Old Face

The name of the journal lives on in the typeface Imprint Old Face. This sturdy design, Caslon-like but with more regularity in its letterforms, was produced for the magazine (on a non-exclusive basis) in 1912 by the Monotype Company as Series 101[1] for automatic composition on the Monotype caster. When delivered to the journal's printers on December 31, 1912, it was still incomplete — the accents had not yet been made — so the editors asked in the first issue: “Will readers kindly insert them for themselves, if they find their omission harsh? For ourselves, we rather like the fine careless flavour, which their omission gives, after we have recovered from the first shock inevitable to us typographical precisians”.[2]

Perhaps Imprint’s most notable use since then has been for the entire setting of the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), 22,000 pages of precisely structured typography in 20 volumes.

It is available today as a digital OpenType font from Monotype's successor, Monotype Imaging.[3]

References

  1. ↑ The Monotype Chronicles 1907 – 1916
  2. ↑ The Imprint, January 1913, p. vi
  3. ↑ Fonts.com: Imprint Volume
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