Times New Roman
Times New Roman
Times New Roman was originally designed by Stanley Morrison for the Times newspaper of London in 1931. It evolved from Plantin (designed by F.H Pierpont in 1913 for Monotype) and Gros Cicero (designed by Robert Granjon in 1568). Times is engineered to save space in newspaper printing and it became popular during WWII because it helped save paper. It was later adopted by Henry Luce for his publishing empire in the United States and has been used by newspapers ever since.
The original versions of Times Roman were designed for hot-metal composition and the basic character designs and spacing were modified slightly in each point size to maximise legibility: small sizes had looser letter spacing, thicker strokes and shorter ascenders/descenders. Unfortunately these fine adjustments are lost when Times is scaled from an outline font for electronic typesetting. The characters also lose their elegance when printed at low resolutions.
On the desktop, Times can be used to connote tradition and elegance. With its narrow shapes and tight letter spacing it is best used in narrow columns of text, say no more than 60 characters wide. If you must use wider columns, increase the leading between the lines to make it easier for the eye to follow. Sizes smaller than 9 points may need extra letter spacing to prevent the serifs of letters actually touching each other.
Adapted from "The Electronic Publisher"
by D. Burns, S. Venit and R. Hansen.
