Jan Tschichold designed Sabon™ in 1964, and it was produced jointly by three foundries: D. Stempel AG, Linotype and Monotype. This was in response to a request from German master printers to make a font family that was the same design for the three metal type technologies of the time: foundry type for hand composition, linecasting, and single-type machine composition. Tschichold turned to the sixteenth century for inspiration, and the story has a complicated family thread that connects his Sabon design to the Garamond lineage. Jakob Sabon, who the type is named for, was a student of the great French punchcutter Claude Garamond. He completed a set of his teacher's punches after Garamond's death in 1561. Sabon became owner of a German foundry when he married the granddaughter of the Frankfurt printer, Christian Egenolff. Sabon died in 1580, and his widow married Konrad Berner, who took over the foundry. Tschichold loosely based his design on types from the 1592 specimen sheet issued by the Egenolff-Berner foundry: a 14-point roman attributed to Claude Garamond, and an italic attributed to Robert Granjon. Sabon was the typeface name chosen for this twentieth century revival and joint venture in production; this name avoided confusion with other fonts connected with the names of Garamond and Granjon. eText fonts - the optimum of on-screen text quality With our new eText fonts that have been optimised for on-screen use, you can ensure that your texts remain readily legible when displayed on smartphones, tablets or e-readers. The poor resolution of many digital display systems represents a major challenge when it comes to presenting text. It is necessary to make considerable compromises, particularly in the case of text in smaller point sizes, in order to adapt characters designed in detail using vector graphics to the relatively crude pixel grid. So-called 'font hinting' can help with this process. This, for example, provides the system with information on which lines are to be displayed in a particular thickness, i.e. using a specific number of pixels. As font hinting is a largely manual and thus very complex technique, many typefaces come with only the most necessary information. What is unimportant for a text printed in high resolution can result in a poor quality image when the same text is displayed on a screen, so that reading it rapidly becomes a demanding activity. Specially optimised eText fonts can help overcome this problem. An extremely refined and elaborate font hinting system makes sure that these fonts are optimally displayed on screens. Monotype has not only adopted font hinting for this purpose but has also thoroughly reworked the fonts to hone them for display in low resolution environments. For example, the open counters present in the letters C, c, e, S, s, g etc. have been slightly expanded so that these retain their character even in small point sizes. Also with a view to enhancing appearance in smaller point sizes, line thickness has been discreetly increased and x-height carefully adjusted. Kerning has also been modified. Don't leave the on-screen appearance of your creations to chance. Play it safe and use eText fonts to achieve perfect results on modern display devices. Many typefaces, including many popular classics, are already available as eText fonts and new ones are continually being published. The eText font you can purchase here are available for use as Desktop Fonts or Web Fonts. Should they be used in Mobile Devices such as smartphones, tablets or eReaders, please contact our OEM specialists at sales-eu@monotype.com.