HEX Jubilee

Below is the full text of an independent review of Jubilee by Mr Allen Hutt, which appeared in The Penrose Annual of 1955. We are grateful to Mr Hutt and the editor of The Penrose Annual for publishing the original article.

The appearance of Jubilee, the new Linotype face for newspaper and periodical text, is a notable typographic event. It is the first original newspaper text face to be devised in this country for twenty-three years; the first, in fact, since Times Roman (1932). Do not conclude from this that Linotype & Machinery Ltd are presenting Jubilee as a latter-day competitor with Times. The whole basis and purpose of its conception and execution is contrary to any such aim. Times Roman was conceived as the answer to the problems, needs, and technical conditions of a particular newspaper; and its acknowledged brilliance is still best seen in the specific conditions of Printing House Square, or in the separate fields of high-grade periodical and book work. Jubilee’s approach is general, not particular. It seeks, in terms of British production conditions, to meet the typographic needs of the great mass of our newspapers just as, nearly thirty years ago, the Americans sought to meet their newspapers’ needs, in terms of their production conditions, with the introduction of the Ionic-Excelsior range.

The full significance of Jubilee cannot be grasped unless seen in relation to the American Ionic and its derivatives. The general introduction of Ionic or Excelsior into our newspapers was always something of a faute de mieux; these heavy-coloured, monotone, blunt-serif, square faces were designed with an eye to American technical factors of which certainly two, the press work and the character of the newsprint, were substantially different in this country. In any event the successive modifications introduced in what came to be called the ‘legibility group’ suggested something of the shortcomings found in these faces even under American conditions. The original Ionic (1925) was too heavy, too big on its body; hence the redesigned and lighter Excelsior. Then came the slightly heavier Opticon, the much lighter Paragon, and finally the strong-coloured but narrower Corona (1940), an attempt to overcome the wide-set which made the whole group extravagant of space.

The virtue of Jubilee is that it starts afresh where the Americans left off and does so, it must be repeated, in terms of British press work and newsprint. In a sense it stands midway between Times and Excelsior. It meets the requirements of dry-flong stereotyping and high-speed rotary machining by being as open and sturdy as Excelsior and as big on its body. But in set-width it approximates to the economy of Times; in the normal body sizes in a narrow newspaper column its character count per line is only one or two less than Times and at least three more than Excelsior. Its serifs are blunt, as in Excelsior, but not left square; the simple device of chamfering the ends gives finish and sharpness without emulating the elegance of Times and its fine bracketed serifs. Of particular importance is the shading; this has been contrived with special care so as to strike a balance between the old-face contrast of thicks and thins in Times and the even monotone of Ionic-Excelsior, while increasing the white in the counters and providing for markedly more side-space (i.e. space between the letters) than would normally be expected in a face so economical in set. One example will show the delicacy of the design calculation here. Taking an old-face thick-thin contrast in 10 pt, Jubilee transfers approximately ·001 in. of shading from the thick stroke to the thin; this transfer of shading is the means of achieving the open counters and the side-spacing. That extra side space has an important attraction for the newspaper printer; it means that the matrix walls are slightly thicker than usual and will therefore stand up longer to the heavy wear and tear of news work.

This analysis of the anatomy of Jubilee leaves something to be said of the general character of the face. A glance at the specimens shows that while making no radical departure in appearance—and any general-duty news face which did so would put itself out of court at once—it is an original design, combining ease-on-the-eye with a note of style that was always lacking in the Ionic-Excelsior group. Jubilee, in fact, meets the case where lonic or Excelsior are too plain and commonplace (apart from their other defects) and Times too brilliant. It can be set solid, though it takes kindly to a 1 pt lead. It is available in the full normal range of news text sizes from 6 pt to 12 pt, duplexed either with italic or bold; the italic is particularly good and the bold is vigorous, though some of its characters are oddly evocative of De Vinne. It would be possible to offer criticisms of these characters, but this is of little consequence in relation to the general effect of Jubilee massed in a news page. To judge the face finally we shall have to see it under normal edition conditions in more than one newspaper, though the initial experience of the Glasgow Herald group, which went over to Jubilee in the autumn of 1954, is certainly encouraging.

Jubilee has the additional advantage that tests have shown it well suited for photogravure reproduction. That this last point is of special importance, given the technical trends of today, needs no argument. Mrs Warde’s recent examination, by photomicrographs, of the performance of a number of text faces in different processes of reproduction suggests that no existing face is equally satisfactory for rotary letterpress and photogravure. If the tests already made are confirmed in regular practice—and it is a noted gravure establishment that has pronounced Jubilee ‘excellent’—then Jubilee will have achieved a welcome versatility for the periodical house employing both rotary letterpress and gravure.