Calendar Font

Skyline Type Foundry has one. It is shown in their “Borders and Ornaments” catalog which you can download off their website.

http://www.skylinetype.com/typeborders.html

It is 18 point.

I agree with you that the calendar fonts aren’t the most exciting type style in the world, but they are made to have a high degree of legibility….that’s the reason they are that way. I think they can still look pretty good if you print them in a color, and especially a light color.

Thanks Geoffrey! This one looks like the same cut that M & H has actually. I was also thinking it may look nicer with some spacing and leading so everything isn’t so crunched. That might help if I go with this one.

What I’d really like to find is one like is shown in this picture. The weekdays are in reverse (negative on black), the corners are round, it just feels nicer. Better contrast, hierarchy and more finesse. (This is why graphic designers are better off with photopolymer…we’re too picky.)

cupcake.jpg

I would like to print some kind of small calendar for my next project, but I would need a set of type that has a lot of number sorts (14 1’s, 14 2’s). I have some 12-point Garamond that fits the bill, but all of my larger type is just has a few 1’s and 2’s.

Any advice for printing calendars? Is a “perpetual calendar” font realistically the only way to go? Or do I need to try to find a (legible) typeface somewhere that is rich in 1’s and 2’s?

Thanks,
Jason

Jason - take a look at the fonting schemes for Skyline:

http://www.skylinetype.com/typeborders.html

Sky has deliberately increased the number of low-order figures (vs. ATF’s fonting schemes) so as to assist in setting calendars (though none of his fonts goes as far as having 14 figure 2 sorts).

Regards,
David M.
www.CircuitousRoot.com

Jason:

One of the big advantages of the perpetual calendar fonts is that the spacing is uniform so you need only replace one element and have a perfectly centered number.

If you use loose type, you may have to mess with various spacing to get the numbers properly centered and aligned. You will find some faces which have uniform width numerals designed for aligning vertically in tables, but just as many or more others have numerals which vary in width from one to the other. It just takes a little finesse to get thing looking good.

John Henry
Cedar Creek Press

re varying widths of numerals:

At the afternoon newspaper where I worked, the apprentices (after gaining a little competence/confidence with the Linotype) were given a multi-slug tabulation of numbers to typeset as an exercise.

The exercise was arranged so that, on about the tenth line of about 15 lines of the tabulation, a 3/4 (fraction) symbol came at the end of the first slug of that line; higher up the tabulation was a 1/2 (half), also at the end of the slug; in the sample, all fractions were on en (nut) spaces, but when the apprentice came to actually get that line with the 3/4 fraction into the assembler, they found the matrix in the fount was on an em (mutton) space, so they had lost their practice time for that day.

I did not ask whether this had been a deliberate “trap” lesson. And I never heard of any apprentice telling the apprentices of the next year about the nut and mutton fraction widths.

Later, at a morning daily, when we used photosetting, the numeral 1 (one) problems of width were never solved in advertising, though I notice now (in news text) most Australian newspapers have allocated it a narrower set-width. [Should there be two differing widths of numeral 1 (one), a wide one for tabulation and a narrow one for “straight” text? Would Caxton have approved?]

The national Australian newspaper (computer-set), in my opinion, has reduced the minimum space between words to a too-small value; also, which I endorse, it looks as though they are willing to vary the space between characters by a small amount (+ and -) to give an more-even “colour” to the page.

On my “deluxe” version of computer-assisted typesetting, I condense or expand the width of characters by up to 6%, and (for my own authorship) re-write sentences occasionally.

Apologies for writing in Australian-English language, I make enough keyboard mistakes without trying to write in another language.

Alan.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I ended up ordering the perpetual calendar font from Skyline. I e-mailed Julie Belcher at Yee-haw who designed the calendar in the image above but haven’t gotten a response. Unfortunately they are closing shop so I doubt I will hear back.

Thanks again for everyone’s help!

The calendar pad above was printed offset. The original artwork was built from a wooden calendar set; I believe it was made by Hamilton and I’m pretty sure it can be seen in the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type book. Not sure what page, as i don’t own one myself. Numbers measure 3p, so what you see here is scaled down quite a bit from original proofed size.