Published on Wednesday, September 5th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Monotype Imaging has released the 14-font Classic Grotesque suite of typefaces, designed by Rod McDonald of Lake Echo, N.S. Inspired largely by the Monotype Grotesque design released in 1926, Classic Grotesque is the newest member of the Monotype collection available from Fonts.com.

In his update of the original designs, McDonald “imbues the aesthetic quality of the original Monotype Grotesque typefaces, the first sans serifs cut for hot-metal machine typesetting.”

Classic Grotesque includes seven weights that range from light to extra bold, each with a cursive italic complement. The family is available as OpenType Pro fonts, allowing for the automatic insertion of ligatures, fractions and the alternate two-story ‘g’ and single-story ‘a’ design. Pro fonts also include an extended character set, which enables the setting of most Central European and many Eastern European languages.

“Designing Classic Grotesque was more complex than I had anticipated,” McDonald said. “This was largely because I initially based my design solely on the early Monotype Grotesques. As a result, elements of the Arial design – which also has its roots in the 1926 sans serif typefaces – kept intruding into my design. Then one day I realized that all I had to do was go back to the same typefaces that Monotype had used to develop the Grotesques. After that, Arial ceased to be a problem and I found myself working on a new design inspired by three classic sans serifs: the Ideal Grotesk, Venus and Monotype Grotesque designs. As if by magic, I also discovered that this was what I had wanted to do all along.”

The newest additions to the Classic Grotesque suite of typefaces may be purchased and downloaded from www.fonts.com, www.linotype.com and www.itcfonts.com. The new fonts are available as Web fonts at Fonts.com Web Fonts.

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