Designer: Zuzana
LickoOriginally created in 1996, Mrs Eaves was Zuzana Licko's first attempt at the design of a conventional typeface. It was styled after Baskerville, the famous transitional serif typeface created in 1757 by John Baskerville in Birmingham, England. Mrs Eaves was named after Baskerville's reside in maid, Sarah Eaves, whom he later married.
One of Baskerville's intents was to establish typefaces that pushed the contrast in between thick and thin strokes, partially to flaunt the new printing and paper making strategies of his time. As an outcome his types were frequently criticized for being too perfect, plain, and challenging to read.
Licko discovered that subsequent interpretations and revivals of Baskerville had continued along the same course of excellence, using as a design the qualities of the lead type itself, not the printed specimens. Upon studying books printed by Baskerville at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, Licko decided to base her style on the printed samples which were much heavier and had more character due to the imprint of lead type into paper and the resulting ink spread. She minimized the contrast while maintaining the general openness and lightness of Baskerville by offering the lower case characters a wider percentage. She then decreased the x-height relative to the cap height to avoid increasing the set width.
There is something special about Mrs Eaves and it's difficult to define. Its individual characters are at times awkward looking-- the W being narrow, the L uncommonly wide, the flare of the strokes leading into the serifs unusually pronounced. Taken individually, at first sight some of the characters do not appear to mesh. The spacing is generally too loose for big bodies of text, it sort of rambles along. Yet when used in the right situation it imparts an extremely specific feel that sets it plainly apart from lots of likeminded types. It has an undefined quality that resonates with individuals. This paradox (imperfect yet pleasing) is maybe best shown by style critic and historian Robin Kinross who has actually pointed out the limitation of the "loose" spacing that Licko employed, among other things, yet concurrently designated the Mrs Eaves type specimen with a respectable reference in the 1999 American Center for Design competition. Evidence, possibly, that type is best evaluated in the context of its usage.
Even with all its shortcomings, Mrs Eaves has outsold all Emigre fonts by twofold. On MyFonts, one of the biggest on-line type sellers, Mrs Eaves has been among the 20 finest selling types for years, noted amongst such classics as Helvetica, Univers, Bodoni and Franklin Gothic. Due to its business and popular success it has pertained to define the Emigre type foundry.
While Licko initially set out to design a standard text face, we never specified how Mrs Eaves could be best used. Typefaces will find their own method. However if there's one specific common use that sticks out, it needs to be literary-- Mrs Eaves likes to adorn book covers and relishes short blurbs on the flaps and backs of dust covers. Journeys to bookstores are constantly a treat for us as we find our Mrs Eaves staring out at us from lots of book covers in the most elegant structures, each time unexpected us with her many talents.
And Mrs Eaves feels simply as comfortable in a broad variety of other locations such as CD covers (Radiohead's Hail to the Thief being our favorite), restaurant menus, logo designs, and poetry books, where it provides sophisticated existence to short texts.
One location where Mrs Eaves seems less comfortable remains in the setting of long texts, particularly in environments such as the interiors of books, magazines, and papers. It seems to handle long texts well only if there is sufficient space. A fine example is the book/ CD/DVD release The Band: A Musical History published by Capitol Records. Here, Mrs Eaves was provided appropriate set width and generous line spacing. In such cases its large percentages supply a luxurious feel which welcomes reading. Economy of space was not one of the goals behind the initial Mrs Eaves style. With the intro of Mrs Eaves XL, Licko addresses this issue.
Since Mrs Eaves is among our most popular typefaces, it's not unexpected that for many years we've gotten lots of suggestions for additions to the family. The predominant top 3 dreams are: greater area economy; the addition of a bold italic style; and the desire to match it with a sans design. The XL series answers these demands with an extensive set of new font styles consisting of a narrow, and a buddy series of Mrs Eaves Sans designs to be released soon.
The main distinguishing functions of Mrs Eaves XL are its bigger x-height with much shorter ascenders and descenders and general tighter spacing. These additional font styles broaden the Mrs Eaves family for a larger range of uses, particularly those needing area economy. The bigger x-height likewise permits a smaller sized point size to be used while keeping readability.
Mrs Eaves XL likewise has a narrow equivalent to the regular, with a set width of about 92 percent which fulfills much more compact usages. At initially, this may not seem particularly narrow, but the objective was to provide an alternative to the regular that would work well as a compact text face while preserving the full qualities of the routine, rather than an extreme narrow which would be preferable for headline use.
Four years in the making, we're thrilled to lastly let Mrs Eaves XL discover its way into the world and see where and how it will appear next.
Font Family:
