Column
A tale of two typefaces
Diana Varma
Two examples that retain their identity from ink to pixels
It was the best of type, it was the worst of type...
This is a tale of two typefaces: Mallory and Retina. Legendary
type designer, Tobias Frere-Jones, created both with the goal
of ensuring legibility at the most extreme sizes, in print and
on screen.
Frere-Jones identified the need for greater flexibility in the
sizing up and sizing down of typefaces to enable accessibility
for both printed and digital media. Type has a significant role
to play in accessible design and ensuring legibility when text
exists as pixels is increasingly important. For example, lower-
case letters “o” and “c”, as well as lowercase “i” and uppercase
“I” can appear nearly identical in small sizes. In the past, metal
type has afforded typesetters the ability to make blocks of
text look as good as possible at different sizes by manually
adjusting the spacing until it looked just right. “Spacing is an
essential structure that needs to be preserved,” explained
Frere-Jones in late 2016. Automating the manual process of
typesetting has dramatically decreased the complexity and
increased efficiency of setting type, but it has also removed
the craft of perfecting the extremes of setting small and large
text.
Enter the modern concept of “designing up” and “designing
down” to ensure a typeface retains its identity from ink to
pixels and from tiny (“MicroPlus”) to towering (standard). Mal-
lory was “designed down” (originally created in standard size
and now optimized in MicroPlus size), while Retina was
“designed up” (originally created in MicroPlus size and now
available in standard size).
Standard vs. MicroPlus
Standard sizing is how the vast majority of the world’s type-
faces have been designed and they are best suited for text
and headlines, while MicroPlus sizing from Frere-Jones Type
is designed for use with tiny
type (defined as 8 points or
smaller in print and 15 pixels
and smaller on screen). It aims
to make type more accessible
in more places in more sizes.
The spacing between charac-
ters and within characters (the
dot over the “i”, for example)
is increased in MicroPlus siz-
ing and overall proportions
have been tweaked resulting
in greater legibility at smaller
sizes.
28 | November 2017 | GRAPHIC ARTS MAGAZINE
Mallory is a typeface originally designed for use in standard
sizes, born from the traditions of both American and British
type ancestors. Mallory’s type family displays diverse widths
and a range of voices “from the prim and austere Thin to
the loud and gregarious Ultra” providing a great deal of
value for the user. Mallory was later reworked as a MicroPlus
typeface by making the letters wider, increasing the vertical
x-height of the lowercase letters, loosening character spa-
cing, and widening character apertures.
Retina was originally designed
in MicroPlus size for the finan-
cial pages of the Wall Street
Journal. Printers understand
that numbers appearing at 5.5
points on newsprint is a dan-
gerous combination. Small “ink
wells” (notches strategically
set into the characters) may
look strange at larger sizes but
they are an ingenious pro-
active design feature that helps printed ink complete each
letter beautifully. After its successes on the printed page,
it was time for Retina to hit the big screen and the typeface
was reworked without the notches and using more conven-
tional proportions for headlines and larger text sizes. As an
added bonus, the Retina family of characters was thought-
fully developed to occupy a consistent amount of space no
matter which of the seven weights are used. This “duplexed”
feature means that from Extra Light to Bold, a line of text
will always take up the same amount of horizontal space,
making it much easier to change the weight of the type
without it affecting line lengths. Retina has been revered
as a milestone in type design and has been acquired by
The Museum of Modern Art for its Architecture and Design
Collection.
Type that is easy to read no matter the size nor the medium
has a huge role to play in successful accessible design.
Reworking an existing typeface to be more effective in a
greater number of design situations is forward thinking and
valuable to the end user. Frere-Jones said it best: “Type-
faces that are only designed for one medium are
short-sighted. It’s like buying a car that can only turn left.”
Diana Varma is an Instructor at the School of Graphic
Communications Management at Ryerson University and the
Owner of ON-SITE First Aid & CPR Training Group, a health & safety
company that provides training to the Graphic Arts Industry.
graphicartsmag.com