Granjon, Robert, fl. 1545-88, French designer of type and printer. He began his work in Paris and afterward worked in Lyons, Antwerp, and Rome. The types that he designed and made included roman, italic, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. He is known especially for his caractères de civilité, based on a beautiful French handwriting and intended to take the place in France that italic type then held in Italy. The greater legibility of italic caused the Granjon style to fall into disuse. Printers who used types designed and made by Granjon included Christophe Plantin, of Antwerp.

Granjon is an old style serif typeface designed by George W. Jones (1877–1962) in the period 1928–1929, and based on the Garamond typeface that was used in a book printed by the Parisian Jean Poupy in 1592. The roman design was from Claude Garamond and the italic version was from Robert Granjon. Because several other Garamonds were on the market in the 1920s, Jones decided to name his type Granjon. Many of the Garamond revivals of the 1920s were later shown to be actually based on the types of Jean Jannon.

Chauncey H. Griffith of the American Linotype office contributed to the development of the typeface family by developing a bold weight. A longtime popular text type, Granjon's digital version is sometimes criticized as being "anemic" in smaller point sizes.

References

• Friedl, 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.
• Jaspert, Berry and Johnson. Encyclopaedia of Type Faces. Cassell Paperback, London; 2001. ISBN 1-84188-139-2
• Lawson, Alexander S., Anatomy of a Typeface. Godine: 1990. ISBN 978-0879233334.
• Macmillan, Neil. An A–Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press: 2006. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.

External links

• Granjon Font Family - by George W. Jones
• Font of the Week: Granjon
• MyFont's web page for Granjon
• Textism web page for Granjon