Small Talks
Contributed by Small Editions
on Apr 8th, 2025. Artwork published in
March 2025
.
Small Talks is an in-person event series hosted by Small Editions. Small Talks is about books: designing books, making books, publishing books, selling books, distributing books, collecting books. Each Small Talk will explore one theme in detail. Small Talks will invite a myriad of book-ish folks to speak about projects, practice, and contemporary issues in book-making. Small Talks will be short, sweet, cozy, and informal, and will take place at our studio in Brooklyn. Everyone is welcome.
Small Editions created the overall identity and event visuals for the talk series, set in Rockwell Bold Condensed from Monotype.
2 Comments on “Small Talks”
(Not knowing where to bring this information to the Rockwell entry, I chose this example which is closest to my point, the Roctus entry not existing and Stafford without an example.)
The site sanskritweb.net reports a Rockwell clone, published by URW: Roctus T, on pages 3–7–18 of the document: www.sanskritweb.net/forgers…
Essential to Rockwell geometry, the serifs are perfectly orthogonal; Roctus is distinguished by slight curved inflections of the serifs, and the addition of two SmallCaps Light and Regular variations with Old-fashioned numerals.
SoftMaker’s Stafford—also a Rockwell clone—uses this same incision work, reinforced here. The effect on the capital letters of the lightest weights, mainly Light and ExtraLight, gives the design a remarkable lapidary elegance, similar to the Monumental Romans.
Thank you, Martier. For comments that don’t relate to a specific Use, you can always write to the editorial team. (Isobel, I hope you don’t mind a bit of font nerdery underneath your post about Small Talks!)
URW’s version was previously mentioned on the Rockwell page as Slab Serif No2 – which is the name that URW used for it by 1999. Roctus T now has a separate page.
Stafford Serial didn’t originate at SoftMaker. It’s an adaptation and extension made at Brendel and is shown in a Brendel Informatik catalog from around 1989 (but might also be a good deal older than that). This info has now been added to the typeface page.
A note on the terminology*: a “clone” is commonly defined as an exact replica of something. Roctus T isn’t identical to (Monotype’s digitization of) Rockwell. I’d describe it as another digitization of Pierpont’s 1930s design, with distinct qualities. (Also, did Monotype already have a digitization of Rockwell in 1983? I don’t know.)
Stafford isn’t an exact replica of Rockwell either: it’s distinguished by a raised x-height and a different family structure with seven weights. I would call it an adaptation, a reinterpretation, or a follower. But not a clone.
As for Rockwell’s “perfectly orthogonal” serifs: that’s true of the Monotype digitization. It’s a different matter when you look at the original metal version, though.
From left to right, the image below shows the letter A in Rockwell Bold 391, 72pt size (Monotype Corporation Ltd, 1934), Roctus T Bold (URW, 1984), Rockwell Bold (Monotype Imaging Inc., v13, 2017), and Rockwell Bold 391, 12pt size (Monotype Corporation Ltd, 1934).
The large size of the metal type does have serifs that are incised towards the legs – just like Roctus T. To me, it looks like URW based their interpretation on such a large size, while Monotype Imaging followed a smaller cut for their digitization (minus the ink spread). I can’t detect any incisions in the 12pt size. On the contrary, the serifs here look like they were bracketed. Also note the narrower width and the smaller aperture, and – probably most strikingly – the different weight of the legs in the two versions on the right.
*) I won’t go into Mr. Stiehl’s misguided use of terms such as “forgeries” on his sanskritweb.net. He has compiled lots of interesting information, but his conclusions aren’t always informed.