The Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­sity Presses (AAUP) holds an annual Book, Jacket & Jour­nal Show which cat­a­logs the best in book design and exhibits it around the country.

The jurors for this year’s show include some impor­tant names in typog­ra­phy, includ­ing William Drentel and Jes­sica Helfand of Design Observer, and typog­ra­pher and type designer Kent Lew, who cre­ated the Font Bureau’s lovely and lit­er­ary text face, Whit­man.

Jes­sica Helfand, William Drentel, Susan Col­berg, and Kent Lew exam­ine AAUP Show entries.

The cat­a­log of the show is a beau­ti­ful record of the selected entries, and, because type­face cred­its are included, it’s also a good gauge of cur­rent trends in type­face selec­tion for books and journals.

We ordered cat­a­logs from the last three years of the show and tal­lied the type­faces used. The results won’t shock you — each of the top ten is a tried-and-true clas­sic. Yet there is so much more great type out there beg­ging to be used for aca­d­e­mic text and titling. So, along with the cham­pi­ons, I’m rec­om­mend­ing a few less common alter­na­tives that offer just as much read­abil­ity, func­tion, and beauty for today’s books and journals.

1. Minion  View at FontShop

“Wild Plants of the Sierra Nevada” | Designer: Cameron Poul­ter | Cover type is New Caldeo­nia
With a set of 64 fonts in var­i­ous opti­cal size mas­ters and a con­densed option, Minion is one of the most com­plete serif fam­i­lies avail­able. Add to that an eco­nom­i­cal width and what might be the most pow­er­ful endorse­ment of any book face — Robert Bringhurst used it for his sem­i­nal “Ele­ments of Typo­graphic Style” — and it’s no sur­prise that Minion is the most common type­face used in all three cat­a­logs of the AAUP show.

Alter­na­tives:

• FF Meta Serif — Erik Spiek­er­mann often rec­om­mended Minion as a work­horse serif until he went ahead and designed his own.
• Karmina
• Mentor

2. ITC New Baskerville  View at FontShop

“Memoirs and Madness” | Designer: David Drum­mond
New Baskerville isn’t far behind Minion in the tally of most pop­u­lar book faces and, if you ask me, it’s a crying shame. Of all the mem­bers of this list, the dig­i­tal ITC New Baskerville is too del­i­cate and dainty to really per­form well as a text face and in most set­tings it’s also far too antique for the sub­ject matter. Yes, I know Ben Franklin was a big Baskerville fanboy, but we don’t need to take all his advice.

Alter­na­tives:

• Baskerville 1757 — If you must use Baskerville, skip the wispy ITC ver­sion and go with some­thing meatier. Designer Lars Bergquist resisted the ten­dency to pare down hair­lines and pret­tify serifs and other detail work.
• Baskerville 10
• Mrs. Eaves — Not a text face, but if the moment calls for a flow­ery Baskerville aroma and osten­ta­tious lig­a­tures this lady will per­form well. Pay care­ful atten­tion to her spac­ing and use only for dis­play work.
• Athe­las
• FF Clifford

3. FF Scala & 4. FF Scala Sans  View at FontShop

“Boris Yeltsin and Russia’s Demo­c­ra­tic Transformation” | Designer: Ashley Saleeba
One of the first designs to come with sans and serif com­pan­ions, this early Font­Font is also one of the first serif type­faces to be orig­i­nally designed specif­i­cally for the dig­i­tal medium. FF Scala rep­re­sents the only face on our list besides Minion designed after 1990. Its pop­u­lar­ity in modern book design is obvi­ous — it seems like every other museum cat­a­log I see is set in Scala. Fine by me. They’re usu­ally gorgeous.

Alter­na­tives:

• FF Nexus Serif — Martin Majoor’s follow-​up to Scala is slightly heav­ier, warmer, and more tra­di­tional. In addi­tion to the expected sans com­pan­ion, Nexus also has slab and mono­spaced variants.
• Fresco — A serif/sans pair from master Fred Smei­jers that is truly con­tem­po­rary. The Plus ver­sion has longer ascen­ders and descen­ders for more formal settings.
• FF Tisa — Five years ago, the options for truly new serif faces were meager. But recently, grad­u­ates of rig­or­ous type design pro­grams have pro­duced scores of con­tem­po­rary designs for seri­ous text set­ting. Mitja Miklavčič is an award-​winning prod­uct of Read­ing. His low con­trast Tisa is a gen­uinely new take on text types and a wel­come non­con­formist in the con­ser­v­a­tive field of book design.
• Dolly

5. Adobe Garamond  View at FontShop

“An Illus­trated Chi­nese Mate­ria Medica” | Designer: Tracy Bald­win
Robert Slim­bach’s 1989 inter­pre­ta­tion has been for years the most pop­u­lar dig­i­tal ren­di­tion of the roman types of Claude Gara­mond, the go-​to type­face for those want­ing a little more ele­gance and old world charm than a Caslon or Times could produce.

Alter­na­tives:

• Gara­mond Pre­mier — Slimbach’s second take on the style rep­re­sents nearly 20 years of research and draw­ing. And with its var­i­ous cuts for dif­fer­ent sizes, Gara­mond Pre­mier is a more thought­ful trib­ute to the orig­i­nal metal type.
• MVB Verdigris
• Lau­rent­ian
• Arnhem
• FF Parango

6. Trade Gothic  View at FontShop

“From Rev­o­lu­tion to Ethics” | Designer: David Drum­mond
The early gothic sans serif style (rep­re­sented by Trade, News, and Franklin Gothic) could be con­sid­ered America’s Hel­vetica, appear­ing on book jack­ets any time a basic sans is needed. Like Hel­vetica, they are used so often that they’ve lost much of their char­ac­ter. So unless banal­ity is the goal, there are many alter­na­tives that are either more inter­est­ing or offer more util­ity for modern design.

Alter­na­tives:

• Benton Sans — True to Font Bureau’s tra­di­tion, many of News Gothic’s quirks have been reg­u­lar­ized for their rein­ter­pre­ta­tion, and Benton is live­lier in the heavy weights, yet the original’s sturdy, no-​nonsense tone remains. Most impor­tantly, the family was expanded into a ver­sa­tile 26-piece set.
• Spiegel — In draw­ing a new head­line face for the German mag­a­zine Der Spiegel, Luc(as) de Groot trans­formed Franklin Gothic into a modern powerhouse.
• Bull­dog — Taking its cue from type­faces born before Franklin and News Gothic, Bull­dog echos the organic, British idio­syn­crasies of an early gothic by the Fig­gins foundry. Bull­dog per­forms as well in text as it does in head­lines, and though still uncom­mon, it’s been used suc­cess­fully in annual reports and exhi­bi­tion catalogs.

7. Electra  View at FontShop

“Arctic Spec­ta­cles: The Frozen North in Visual Cul­ture, 1818 — 1875” | Designer: Ashley Saleeba
Per­haps Dwig­gins’ best work, Elec­tra deserves to be in the top ten, but it’s a little light for modern presses.

Alter­na­tives:

• Eldo­rado
• Cal­i­forn­ian
• Fair­field

8. Fournier  View at FontShop

“Crush” | Designer: Mary Valen­cia

9. Dante  View at FontShop

“The Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto” | Designer: Maia Wright
Alternatives:

• ITC Galliard
• Iowan Old Style
• Colum­bus
• Albertina

10. DIN  View at FontShop

“Eye Con­tact: Pho­tograph­ing Indige­nous Australians” | Designer: Amy Ruth Buchanan
Alternatives:

• Vafle
• FF Netto
• Klavika
• Con­duit
• Malmö Sans

Other pop­u­lar type­faces used in AAUP win­ning entries:

• Gotham
• Hel­vetica Neue
• Akzi­denz Grotesk
• Futura
• Sabon
• Bembo
• Bodoni
• Filosofia
• Mono­type Grotesque
• Inter­state
• FF Quadraat Sans
• FF Clifford

Tags: book covers, book design, book typefaces, serif, text typefaces