Times New Roman is a seriftypeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper The Times in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration with Victor Lardent, a lettering artist in The Times's advertising department. It has become one of the most popular typefaces of all time and is installed on most personal computers.
Asked to advise on a redesign, Morison recommended that The Times change their text typeface from a spindly nineteenth-century face to a more robust, solid design, returning to traditions of printing from the eighteenth century and before. This matched a common trend in printing tastes of the period. Morison proposed an older Monotype typeface named Plantin as a basis for the design, and Times New Roman mostly matches Plantin's dimensions. The main change was that the contrast between strokes was enhanced to give a crisper image. The new design made its debut in The Times on 3 October 1932. After one year, the design was released for commercial sale. In Times New Roman's name, Roman is a reference to the regular or roman style (sometimes also called Antiqua), the first part of the Times New Roman family to be designed. Roman type has roots in Italian printing of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, but Times New Roman's design has no connection to Rome or to the Romans.
The Times stayed with the original Times New Roman for 40 years. The paper subsequently has switched typefaces five times between 1972 and 2007 to different variants of the original due to new production techniques and a format change from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004.
Monotype released at least eight digital typefaces that carry the name Times New Roman.[105]
Times Europa was designed by Walter Tracy in 1972 for The Times, as a sturdier alternative to the Times font family, designed for the demands of faster printing presses and cheaper paper. It has been released commercially by Adobe, among others, recently in an updating by Linotype as Times Europa Office (discussed above).[123][121]
[122]
Times Roman replaced Times Europa on 30 August 1982.
[124]
Times Millennium was made in 1991, drawn by Gunnlaugur Briem on the instructions of Aurobind Patel, composing manager of News International.[125]
[124]
Times Classic first appeared in 2001.[127][128][129][130] Designed as an economical face by Dave Farey and Richard Dawson, it took advantage of the new PC-based publishing system at the newspaper; the new typeface included 120 letters per font.[124][131][132]
[126]
Times Modern was unveiled on 20 November 2006, as the successor of Times Classic. Designed for improving legibility in smaller font sizes, it uses 45-degree angled bracket serifs. It was designed by Research Studios, led by designer Neville Brody with input from Ben Preston, deputy editor of The Times.[133][134] (Other designs have been released called Times Modern; see below.) During the Times New Roman period The Times also sometimes used Perpetua Titling.[10][65]
[124]
The Times newspaper has commissioned various successors to Times New Roman:
Times Modern was a condensed and bold display variant published by, among others, . It was withdrawn from sale due to trademark disputes with the Times newspaper, which owns its own unrelated design named 'Times Modern' (see above).[150]
Elsner+Flake
CG Times is a variant of Times family made by .
Compugraphic
Pelham is a version of Times Roman by DTP Types of Britain, which also designed an with single-storey 'a' and 'g'.[151]
infant version
In the phototypesetting and digital typesetting periods many font designs have been published inspired by Times New Roman. Although the digital data of Monotype and Linotype releases of Times New Roman are copyrighted, and the name Times is trademarked,[147] the design is in many countries not copyrightable, notably in the United States, allowing alternative interpretations if they do not reuse digital data.[148][149]
produced a version of Times New Roman called Nimbus Roman in 1982. Nimbus Roman No9 L, URW's PostScript variant, was released under the GNU General Public License in 1996,[164][165] and is included with some free and open source software. Various adapted versions exist including FreeSerif,[160][166] TeX Gyre Termes[167] and TeX Gyre Termes Math.[168][169] Like Times New Roman, many additional styles of Nimbus Roman exist that are only sold commercially, including condensed and extra-bold styles. URW also developed Nimbus Roman No. 4, which is metrically compatible with the slightly different CG Times.[170]
