The History of Garamond
Garamond is the name we give to nearly five hundred years of continuous typographic tradition — book type so well judged that the printing world never really stopped using it. It is also the site of history's most productive case of mistaken identity, which is why half the fonts called "Garamond" are actually based on another man's work.
Paris, sixteenth century
Claude Garamont (the spelling of his name varies; "Garamond" stuck to the types) was a Parisian punchcutter — a craftsman who carved letterforms, in reverse, into steel punches from which type moulds were made. Working in the decades around the 1530s–1550s, in the orbit of the great printer Robert Estienne and with royal commissions including the famous Grecs du roi Greek types for King Francis I, Garamont refined the roman letterform that Venetian printers like Aldus Manutius (with punchcutter Francesco Griffo) had pioneered decades earlier.
His romans were a step-change in refinement: even in colour, open and generous in their counters, with gently modelled stroke contrast and an unmistakable calm. Where earlier types still whispered of the scribe's pen, Garamont's felt fully typographic — designed for metal, ink, and paper rather than imitating handwriting. Sixteenth-century printers across Europe bought his punches and matrices, and the model he perfected became the default voice of the European book for two centuries. Type historians classify that whole tradition as "old-style" or, in his honour, Garalde.
The great mix-up
Here the story takes its famous wrong turn. Garamont died in 1561; his punches scattered across European foundries. Some sixty years later, Jean Jannon, a Protestant punchcutter working in Sedan, cut a set of types inspired by the Garamont model but livelier — more angled, with a nervier rhythm and more variation between letters. Through the turbulence of the era, Jannon's materials ended up at the French royal printing office, the Imprimerie royale.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, those types were catalogued and celebrated as Garamont's own. So when the great typeface-revival wave of the 1910s–20s arrived, several foundries lovingly revived Jannon under the name Garamond — including American Type Founders' influential ATF Garamond (1917). Only in 1926 did the historian Beatrice Warde, publishing under the pen name Paul Beaujon, demonstrate that the "Garamond" types at the Imprimerie were Jannon's work from around 1621. By then the name had shipped, as it were. The revivals were too successful to rename.
The result, still true today: fonts named Garamond descend from two different men, born nearly a century apart — and you can learn to tell the families apart at a glance.
A field guide to modern Garamonds
- Monotype Garamond (1922) — based on Jannon. Sparkly and delicate; it was long the "Garamond" bundled with Microsoft Office, which is how most people have met the name.
- Stempel Garamond (1925) — based on genuine Garamont specimens; sturdier and more even, a favourite for book work.
- Adobe Garamond (1989) — Robert Slimbach's revival from Garamont's romans (with italics after Garamont's contemporary Robert Granjon). Probably the most-used "true" Garamond in professional publishing.
- Garamond Premier (2005) — Slimbach's deeper second expedition into the same sources, with optical sizes.
- ITC Garamond (1975) — the black sheep: a huge-x-height 1970s reinterpretation, famous as Apple's corporate face in the 1980s–90s and widely criticised as a Garamond in name only.
- EB Garamond — Georg Duffner's open-source revival of Garamont's 1592 Egenolff–Berner specimen, free under the OFL and excellent. EB Garamond on Google Fonts — the one to reach for on the web.
- Cormorant — a free display-size interpretation of the Garamont spirit, gorgeous at large sizes. Cormorant on Google Fonts
Quick identification trick: Jannon-line Garamonds (Monotype) feel lighter and more sparkling, with a smaller x-height and more slope variation in the italic; Garamont-line revivals (Stempel, Adobe, EB) feel calmer, rounder, and more even in colour.
Why a 500-year-old design still works
Garamond survives because its virtues are the permanent virtues of reading type. Moderate contrast and open counters keep it legible in long text. Its small x-height and long extenders give pages a light, aristocratic colour that flatters literary content. Its forms are distinctive without ever demanding attention — the typographic equivalent of a beautifully mannered narrator. It remains a standard choice for novels and scholarly publishing, and periodically stars in famous branding (ITC Garamond at Apple; a condensed custom cut in Google's pre-2015 logo).
Its weaknesses are the same properties inverted: at small screen sizes the fine details and low x-height historically suffered, which is why Garamond was long considered print-only. High-DPI screens have mostly retired that objection — EB Garamond at 19px on a modern display is a genuinely pleasant read.
The lesson in the name
Garamond's history captures something true about typography in general: typefaces are not fixed artefacts but living traditions, revived, reinterpreted, and occasionally misattributed by each generation that needs them. The name on the font menu is the start of the story, not the whole of it. When a "classic" matters to your project, it's worth knowing which classic you're actually using — and now, for Garamond at least, you do.