Type Categories, part 03: Italic

Echoing the contemporary Italian handwriting of the day, the first italics were close-set and condensed, allowing for more words to fit on single pages. Italics were initially used to produce pocket-sized editions of the classic literature. Italics soon became complements to many roman type families. By the 16th century, virtually all typefaces have been designed with accompanying italic forms.

Italic, circa 1500

Examples shown here are the italicized version of the Oldstyle type we showcased on October 12th, 2009. In order of appearance: Bembo italic, Caslon italic, Garamond italic, and Jenson italic.

CONSIDERATIONS WHEN USING ITALICS
First, make sure that the type family you’re using includes an italic, and that the italic is installed on your system. If you specify italic without having an italic font installed, you’ll get only a slanted version of the roman, which looks (and is) amateurish. Every variation within a type family — italic, bold, condensed, extended semibold italic, whatever — is a separate font. Having one of them does not guarantee that you have all the rest. Just because an “italic” style shows up on your font menu (especially in Windows) doesn’t mean that an italic font is installed on your system. Some typefaces were never designed to have an italic complement.

Information cited from: A Type Primer by John Kane and an article from CreativePro.com, written by John D. Berry