Caslon Ionic
Commercial Type · Paul Barnes · 2018
A revival of Caslon's Ionic No. 2, the bracketed-serif workhorse that shaped newspaper typography in the twentieth century.
About
A bracketed-serif workhorse by Paul Barnes that revives Caslon's Ionic No. 2, a lesser-known nineteenth-century innovation that sat between the modern and the Egyptian and went on to shape newspaper typography in the twentieth century. The family adds extra weights to the original and is published alongside a matching Egyptian companion, Antique No. 6, for editorial and identity work where you want a robust, legible serif with British nineteenth-century roots.
Classification
Commercial Type describe Caslon Ionic as bolder and more robust than the modern, yet lighter and more refined than the Egyptian, with a bracketed serif. They position it as a lesser-known nineteenth-century innovation alongside Thorowgood's Clarendon that greatly influenced the newspaper fonts of the next century.