Design based on Scotch Roman + Bulmer Category Serif Designer William Addison Dwiggins | Also known as Cornelia Classification Transitional serif Date released 1938 | |
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Link linotype.com/1272/new-caledonia-family.html Foundry Mergenthaler Linotype Company | ||
Caledonia is a serif typeface designed by William Addison Dwiggins in 1938 for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company and commonly used in book design. As a transitional serif design, one inspired by the Scotch Roman typefaces of the early nineteenth century, Caledonia has a contrasting design of alternating thick and thin strokes, a design that stresses the vertical axis and sharp, regular serifs on ascenders and descenders.
Contents
Dwiggins chose the name Caledonia, the Roman name for Scotland, to express the face's basis on Scotch Roman typefaces. However, though Dwiggins began with the thought of copying the classical Scotch Romans, eventually he drew more inspiration from the Bulmer design of William Martin. The G is open and the R has a curved tail. the t is unbracketed. Italic characters p and q have no foot serif. The character set, as drawn by Dwiggins was wide, including ranging (old style) figures, lining figures, and small capitals in the text and bold weights. A Greek version of the face is available.
Machine Composition
Caledonia made initially for machine composition with foundry type only made later, and then only in Germany. The following variants were designed by Dwiggins and released by Linotype:
Linotype also made 36 point matrices for Caledonia Bold Condensed, but it is doubtful that Dwiggins had anything to do with their design. The face was sold by Linotype in England under the same name, and in Germany as Cornelia.
Foundry Type
Cornelia, as it was called there, proved so popular in Germany, that the Stempel Foundry cast it as foundry type.
Cold Type Copies
Caledonia’s popularity as a text face continued right through the cold type era, and it was sold then under the following names:
Digital Copies
A digital version, called New Caledonia, available in four weights: text, semibold, bold, and black, each with small capitals, was released in 1982. Digital copies are made by Adobe and Linotype.