Iowan Old Style

Iowan Old Style is a digital serif typeface designed by John Downer and released by Bitstream in 1991.[1]

Iowan Old Style
CategorySerif
ClassificationOld-style
Designer(s)John Downer
FoundryBitstream

Iowan Old Style is inspired by serif typefaces from Renaissance Italy, now called the “old-style” or Venetian model of typeface design, with influence from Downer’s work as hand-painter of signs.[2][3][4]

Compared to the historical models it is based on, Iowan has a higher x-height, meaning that the lower-case letters are taller and appear larger and wider, producing a design that is suitable for display and on-screen use.[5] It is used as a default font on the Apple Books application and is included as a system font on iOS and macOS.[6][7]

Design

Downer has described the design "more Venetian than Aldine" and influenced by lettering.[4] It has diamond-dots (tittles) on the “i” and “j” similar to the Arts and Crafts-influenced Goudy Old Style.[1]

Iowan began as a design for ITC, but after the company dropped plans to release it, the font was bought up by Matthew Carter of Bitstream, who digitized and released it.[4] Bitstream later revisited the design, adding ornaments and titling capitals.[1] The character set includes small capitals and ligatures, as well as Cyrillic characters. Stephen Coles, an expert on digital fonts, describes its design as “hardworking.”[8]

  • An extended setting of a text by Oscar Wilde in Iowan Old Style, showing justified text and leading between the lines.
  • Iowan Old Style’s x-height compared to other serif fonts: higher than Caslon and Bembo, used in fine book printing, but lower than Lucida Bright which is intended for maximum legibility.

References
  1. Berry, John. "An American Typeface Comes of Age". dot creative. Retrieved 2 August 2015.
  2. Butterick, Matthew. "Iowan Old Style". Typography for Lawyers. Archived from the original on January 16, 2015. Retrieved 2 August 2015.
  3. Hoefler, Jonathan. "John Downer at The Propagandist". Hoefler & Frere-Jones. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  4. Johnston, Alastair. "Alastair Johnston interviews John Downer" (PDF). Alastair Johnston. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
  5. "Iowan Old Style". Identifont. Retrieved 2 August 2015.
  6. Coles, Stephen. "Apple iBooks 1.5". Fonts In Use. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  7. Berry, John. "Text on the pages of iBooks". Easily Amused. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  8. "Recommended book text fonts". Fontshop. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
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