Rockwell was conceived by Frank Hinman Pierpont and his design team at Monotype in 1933. They designed the font as a slab serif out of commercial necessity.
The origins of Slab Serif typefaces began in the early nineteenth century, as clients were demanding a new sort of “display” typeface. The first typeface design that met the new demands was the “fat-face,” which has been attributed to Robert Thorne (1754-1820). Thorne’s methodology integrated the contemporary vogue of the continental Modern face and increased the stroke thickness to a staggering degree. This particular brand of display type would inform Slab Serif designs years later. It was Vincent Figgins, a competitor of Thorne’s, who introduced the first Slab Serif typeface in 1815, which he named “Antique”.
Slab Serif typefaces have several monikers, including Square Serif, Mecanes, Antiques, or Égyptienne; the latter appellation derived from budding interest in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaigns. According to Tara Rabinowitz in Exploring Typography, “The name Egyptian refers to the heavy, horizontal aesthetic of ancient Egyptian art, architecture, and hieroglyphics; the typeface gained popularity at about the time of Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt” (Rabinowitz 123). Following Napoleon’s campaigns (1798-1801) as part of the French Revolutionary War, publications such as Description de l’Égypte ou Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l'expédition de l'armée française (1809) disseminated images of Egypt and constructed an identity of Egypt, the Orient, and the exotic Other. In Europe, such imagery spurred a cultural fascination for all artifacts Egyptian. Accordingly it was not uncommon for Slab Serif typefaces to have a metonym suggesting Egyptian connotations (such as Cairo from Intertype, Karnak from Ludlow, and Pharaoh from Deberny & Peignot).
Egyptian typefaces were widely used in poster designs around the turn of the twentieth century. Slab Serif typefaces developed from large-scale, “fat-face” display letters used in woodblock letter-pressing, but the robust letterforms (thanks in part to the hefty serifs) made the Slab Serif letterforms very resilient to metal casting reliefs. Because new technologies in offset lithography technology permitted cheap and efficient print advertisements that branched beyond the familiar realm of books, designers began developing bold, decorative typefaces. The chunky appearance and heavy serifs of Egyptian typefaces are easily recognizable and grab the attention of their audience, making them ideal for this application. As a result, Slab Serifs figure prominently in posters, playbills, and other promotional materials due to its bold display.
The Slab Serif designs of the twentieth century were more refined than the Egyptians of the previous century. Slab Serifs have no bracketing and are generally mono-linear. Overall, these letterforms have a robust, square appearance, and the character width tends to be wider than other typestyles. This robust appearance may be attributed to the large x-height, making Rockwell suitable for brochures and advertising work. Since Slab Serifs are bold and big, they are most commonly used in large headlines and advertisements but are seldom used in body text. The exception is in mono-spaced text, many fonts for which are modeled on the typefaces used in typewriters, but that is declining in the wake of electronic publishing. Another recent exception is the typeface designed for The Guardian newspaper in the UK which is an Egyptian used through the paper as body text. Looking towards the history of Slab Serif fonts we see that as printed material began to branch out from the familiar realm of books, new typefaces were needed for use in advertising, posters, and flyers. Vincent Figgins, first commercially introduced slab serif printing type under the name Antique, with copies of specimen dated 1815 and 1817.
The design of Rockwell and other Egyptian typefaces employ subtle optical adjustments to prevent the type from feeling too heavy and dark. Egyptian typefaces are generally heavy, have low contrast, and often have a vertical angle of stress—if any at all. Typically the typefaces feature unbracketed Slab Serifs of equal thickness to the main strokes; however, the less familiar Italienne variety features slabs that are heavier than the stroke width. Rockwell creates enabling links and patterns composed of the letters. The chacracters have a geometric face with well-defined slab serifs, a fairly high x-height and noticeably short descenders. It is available in four weights and nine fonts, the roman weight is monolined with a serif od equal thickness, while the bold weight has a slight contrast. The bar apex of the uppercase ‘A’ and the deep serifs serve to reinforce the horizontal or linear qualities emphasis of the typeface.
The day Ottmar Mergenthaler demonstrated the first linecasting machine to the New York Tribune in 1886, Whitelaw Reid, the editor, was delighted: “Ottmar,” he said, “you’ve cast a line of type!” The editor’s words formed the basis for the company label, and marked the beginning of Linotype’ s success story. Four years later, the ingenious inventor founded the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. Little did he know that after more than 100 years of successful business the Linotype, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., would be following in his footsteps. Today, Linotype has one of the world’s largest font libraries, offering more than 10,500 high-quality typefaces. Linotype’ s goal is to be a partner for designers and typographers, and to support a global transfer of know-how and an open exchange of ideas and information in the field of typography. The ambitious and qualified staff at Linotype are dedicated to meeting this objective and making it reality.
The Linotype typesetting machine is a "line casting" machine used in printing. The name of the machine comes from the fact that it produces an entire line of metal type at once, hence a line-o'-type, a significant improvement over manual typesetting. The Linotype machine operator enters text on a 90-character keyboard. The machine assembles matrices, which are molds for the letter forms, in a line. The assembled line is then cast as a single piece, called a slug, of type metal in a process known as "hot metal" typesetting. The matrices are then returned to the type magazine from which they came. This allows much faster typesetting and composition than original hand composition in which operators place down one pre-cast metal letter, punctuation mark or space at a time. The machine revolutionized typesetting and with it especially newspaper publishing, making it possible for a relatively small number of operators to set type for many pages on a daily basis. Before Mergenthaler's invention of the Linotype in 1884, no newspaper in the world had more than eight pages.
The designer Frank Hinman Pierpont (born 1860 in New Haven, died 1937 in London) created the font Plantin® in 1913. Pierpont is also known for his many technical inventions and improvements in the Monotype machine park and for his contribution to the development of the revival typeface Plantin. Plantin, the man, was a well-known printer of the 16th century whose font foundry turned out traditional Old Face fonts and the italic cut of Garamond. Frank Hinman Pierpont designed Plantin, the font, based on such fonts, and Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent in turn based their Times New Roman™ design on Plantin. In the style of Garamond, this font is exceptionally legible and makes a classic, elegant impression.
