Oblique type

Few typefaces have both oblique and italic designs, as this is generally a fundamental design choice about how the font should look. A font designer normally decides to design their font with one or the other.

Unusual backslanted oblique lettering on a Norwegian banknote of 1807.

Serif typefaces with an oblique are rare, but the Central Type Foundry's "De Vinne" (the words "American Lining System" in this specimen) is an early exception.

Historically, it was normal for all Latin-alphabet serif fonts to have true italics, but in the late nineteenth century some "sloped romans" were created by European and American foundries, particularly for display type and headings. Notable typefaces in this style include Bookman Old Style in metal type (although not many recent versions), Linn Boyd Benton's "self-spacing" type and the Central Type Foundry's "De Vinne" wedge-serif display face.[6] European examples included Genzsch Antiqua from Genzsch & Heyse.[7][8]

Almost all modern serif fonts have true italic designs. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a number of type foundries such as American Type Founders and Genzsch & Heyse offered serif typefaces with oblique rather than italic designs, especially display typefaces, but these designs (such as Genzsch Antiqua) have mostly disappeared.[9][10][11] An exception is American Type Founders' Bookman, offered in some releases with the oblique of its metal type version.[12] An unusual example of an oblique font from the inter-war period is the display face Koch Antiqua. With a partly oblique lower case, it also makes the italic capitals inline in the style of blackletter capitals in the larger sizes of the metal type. It was developed by Rudolph Koch, a type designer who had previously specialised in to blackletter font design (which does not use italics); Walter Tracy described his design as "uninhibited by the traditions of roman and italic".[13]

The printing historian and artistic director Stanley Morison was for a time in the inter-war period interested in the oblique type style, which he felt stood out in text less than a true italic and should supersede it. He argued in his article Towards an Ideal Italic that serif book typefaces should have as the default sloped form an oblique and as a complement a script typeface where a more decorative form was preferred.[14] He made an attempt to promote the idea by commissioning the typeface Perpetua from Eric Gill with a sloped roman rather than an italic, but came to find the style unattractive; Perpetua's italic when finally issued had the conventional italic 'a', 'e' and 'f'.[15][16] Morison wrote to his friend, type designer Jan van Krimpen, that in developing Perpetua's italic "we did not give enough slope to it. When we added more slope, it seemed that the font required a little more cursive to it."[9][lower-alpha 1] A few other type designers replicated his approach for a time: van Krimpen's Romulus and William Addison Dwiggins' Electra were both released with obliques.[lower-alpha 2] Morison's Times New Roman typeface has a very traditional true italic in the style of the late eighteenth century, which he later wryly commented owed "more to Didot than dogma".[19]

Many sans-serif typefaces use plainer oblique designs instead of italic ones. This is especially true with grotesque designs like Helvetica, which have a spare, industrial aesthetic, and geometric ones like Futura. (As many sans-serif fonts were intended for use on headings and posters, especially early ones, some were not designed with italics at all because these were considered unnecessary.)

Three sans-serif "italics". News Gothic, a 1908 grotesque design, has an oblique. Gothic Italic no. 124, an 1890s grotesque, has a crisp true italic resembling Didone serif families of the period.[20] Seravek, a modern humanist family, has a more informal italic in the style of handwriting.

Humanist sans-serif typefaces, however, often use true italic styles since they are more influenced by calligraphy and traditional serif fonts. Notable humanist sans-serif typefaces include Gill Sans, Goudy Sans, FF Meta and FF Scala Sans; all have italic designs.[21] Adrian Frutiger and other prominent designers have defended obliques as more appropriate for the aesthetic of sans-serif fonts, while Martin Majoor has supported the use of true italics.[22][23]