Category Serif Designer(s) John Downer | Classification Old-style Foundry Bitstream | |
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Iowan Old Style is a digital serif typeface designed by John Downer and released by Bitstream in 1990.
Iowan Old Style is inspired by serif typefaces designed in the 1490s in Italy now called the 'old-style' of typeface design, with influence from Downer's work as hand-painter of signs. Compared to the historical models it is based on, Iowan has a higher x-height, meaning that the lower-case letters are taller and appear larger. This produces a design that is particularly orientated for uses where legibility is a problem such as display and on-screen use. It is used as a default font on Apple's iBooks application and is included as a system font on iOS and OS X.
Design
Downer has described the design as influenced by painted signs he saw or has painted himself in eastern Iowa. It has diamond-dots (tittles) on the 'i' and 'j' similar to the Arts and Crafts-influenced work of Frederic Goudy such as his Goudy Old Style. The character set includes small capitals and ligatures, as well as Cyrillic characters. Bitstream later revisited the design, adding ornaments and capitals for titling. Stephen Coles, an expert on digital fonts, has described its design as 'hardworking'.